Dear America,
According to Gallup, the polling agency, since 1994 more than 70% of Americans have thought that medical care is too expensive. During that period, most Americans have also approved of government taking responsibility for making health care universally available except during the period from 2010 to 2015. However, during that period majority approval of government control reemerged twice; in 2012 and again at the end of 2015 through the present when most Americans again came to favor federal control of the availability of healthcare, and coincidently, during both periods of restored confidence in the federal government with regard to health care, the parties were nominating their presidential candidates; the political noise was national, not local. Notably, over the past 21 years, congress was controlled by the Republicans twice for a total of seven years so far--from 2001 through 2006 and again in 2015 to the present--while the White House has stayed in the hands of the Democratic Party for all but eight of those 21 years, and what was happening during that period, I ask rhetorically. Partisanship emerged as a form of internecine political warfare, particularly from 2010 to 2015 during which period the Republican Party, with a deliberate campaign of concerted and overt propaganda, subverted public opinion against universal health care in the form of Obamacare for political gain. You may have noticed that the lynchpin of every political tirade against the Democrats by a Republican is the Affordable Care Act, and that is why public opinion shifted against federally controlled healthcare after "Obamacare" became a reality. Whether it is called a single payer system, universal Medicare or something else, with the exception of the period during which the Republicans were campaigning against what is now called Obamacare in the cynical quest for control of American government, some form of universal healthcare has been the desire of the majority of the American people. At the same time, a majority, sometimes as much as 63%, favor a system based on private health insurance. That sounds a lot like Obamacare, yet most Americans disapprove of it. So what exactly do the American people want.
According to The Hill, a survey taken this month shows that more than half of Americans favor a single payer system, other wise known as "Medicare for all." At the same time Rasmussen Reports found that only 40% of Americans favor a single payer system while 44% oppose it as of December 2015, albeit 16% are undecided according to that poll. Without belaboring the point further, you can find a poll to support your belief as to what the majority of Americans want by just asking Google. The internet is so democratic that we can all be right. But there is no debating this one fact: we Americans are ambivalent with regard to a single payer system because our politics are so divisive, but the notion that everyone should have access to healthcare is endorsed by the vast majority of us, and it has been since surveys have been taken. The significance of polling in our national debate cannot be denied, but as a people, we don't want to see people die not because there is not cure, but because they don't have enough money. The vast majority of Americans, at least on this issue, are moral, which means that the effort to prevent such an advent as universal health care is immoral, and candidates on the Democratic stage are beginning to concur on that point. Bernie Sanders has said that he wants Medicare for all in no uncertain terms. Hillary Clinton says that she wants it, but that it would be too hard to get because even when the Democrats were in the majority in congress, single payer as an option under the Affordable Care Act couldn't get passed. Martin O'Malley wants to bring hospital costs down through regulation, but he really takes no position. On the Republican side, Ben Carson equates Obamacare with slavery, and the rest of the field haven't been much more rational in their rancorous attacks on the Affordable Care Act, and their opposition to universal health care, though they all keep on saying that they favor an alternative to what we have now while proposing nothing significant, is abundantly clear. So it should be a Democratic year at the only poll that matters...in November. But though we now have at least one voice for a meaningful change from our country's system, which is the most expensive by half of the systems in effect among the thirty most industrialized nations and the most exclusively accessible as well, the prospect of a national single payer system seems as remote as ever to me. That is because despite what seems a political edge for Democrats on the subject, the fact remains that conservatives in both parties are hell-bent on preventing it.
That is why we have to forgo partisan loyalty in November. We need now to focus on the conservative-liberal divide and begin to take names among out politicians on key points, like health care and economic equality, and stop allowing our politicians divert our attention with issues like abortion, Planned Parenthood and the wars in Syria and Iraq. We need an election outcome that focuses just on what each of us needs most...what is most immediate among our legitimate concerns. And on the issue of universal health care, there seems to be a vast majority that favors a single payer system. So in November, I hope that all voters will consider not just what matters to them, but what matters to their neighbors as well. No one should die for the single reason that he doesn't have enough money for health care. And no one should die because we Americans didn't think before we pulled the lever. Let's all be noble in November.
Your friend,
Mike
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