Not a Post About Health Care….
This is not a post about health care. I’d like to reiterate, this is not a post about health care. It’s a post about Senator John Cornyn, who represents me, and his misuse of poll data to bolster his own position.
From an email I received from his office this morning:
“A new CBS poll shows that average citizens, by a margin of 31 to 18, think they’ll be worse off under the proposed overhaul.”
You can read the whole thing at Forbes.com, but let’s focus on those numbers. I’ve made it a practice over the last year to double check any reference to specific figures in an editorial or blog post before I treat it as fact. Likewise, I view any assertion without numbers as highly suspect.
It’s true that the CBS poll shows that 31% of respondents think they’ll be worse off after healthcare reform, and 18% think they’ll be better off. That’s concerning, but it completely ignores that 46% of Americans expect that they’ll be exactly as well off as before. The Senator, if he’d been completely honest, should have said that a new CBS poll shows that average citizens expect no change whatsoever.
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Of course, this is still bad news for health care reform advocates. How do you expect to convince people to invest in something that they don’t expect to see any benefit from? And, since nearly 40% of respondents couldn’t name anything they liked or disliked about reform plans, I have to say that neither side is winning the war of ideas.
Look, I’m more politically involved than average, fairly well read, and pretty biased toward the idea of universal health coverage, and even I can’t decide whether or not I support any of the current proposals for reform. As far as I can tell, it’s all noise and posturing on both sides of the political aisle.
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Okay, maybe this post is a little bit about health care. I’m not sure I believe that health care is a right. I’ve always felt that rights were not something that could be granted, only secured. Free speech is a right. Freedom of religion is a right. Health care is a service.
But even if health care isn’t a right, it doesn’t necessarily follow that we, as a society, shouldn’t provide the basics for everyone. Of course, that may not be possible. Maybe we really can’t afford it. Maybe we should have other priorities, but we should at least weigh the benefits of universal health care against the benefits of national defense, interstate highways, and public education.
But I don’t hear that conversation happening in Congress, and I doubt that it will, and so I’m at a loss. Put me in the 40%, I guess.
