Many on the left trully do not understand why people are so angry about the healthcare legislation. And because they do not understand, they assume that the protestors are ginned up by insurance company and lobbyists. The sad thing is that their lack of understanding contributes to their ignorance and in a spiral to anger generated by their comments.
Reason 1. The holier than thou claim that they are the only ones who want to fix healthcare.
Perhaps the problem with this reasoning is that not everyone is trying to fix the same thing. Most people are happy with the current healthcare ranging from 54-80 percent agreeing depennding on the poll. The rub for many is the rising cost as a percentage of personal expenses that health insurance consumes (even if your company pays for most of it). To fix this problem you need to have a serious discussion of the subsidization of government Medicare and Medicaide patients by private health insurance patients. You also need to discuss torts and their impact on Doctor behavior, insurance company allocation and Pharmaceutical firm pricing policies. You also should add to the mix the growing number of illegals being treated for free at emergency rooms around the country.
But very little of the items above have been discussed. In addition, Barack Obama wants to fix the "50 million uninsured". We will discuss that below. Nancy Pelosi wants to penalize health insurance companies. If you cannot agree on the nature of the problem, you cannot take corrective action.
Reason 2. No one believes the 50 Million Uninsured number.
And the President keeps repeating it as fact. Lets take some facts from the Business Media Institute study on this number:
Myth: There are between 40 million and 50 million uninsured Americans. President Obama referred to “46 million uninsured Americans” in May 2009.
Fact: Anyone who reports that there are more than 46 million uninsured is exaggerating since the Census Bureau puts the number of uninsured at 45,657,000 people.
Fact: Nearly 10 million (9.7) of the 45.7 million uninsured are “not a citizen.” That makes every media claim of uninsured Americans higher than 35.9 million is wrong.
Myth: The 40 million to 50 million uninsured cannot afford health insurance.
Fact: More than 17 million of the uninsured make at least $50,000 per year (the median household income of $50,233) – 8.4 million make $50,000 to $74,999 per year and 9.1 million make $75,000 or higher. Two economists working at the National Bureau of Economic Research concluded that 25 to 75 percent of those who do not purchase health insurance coverage “could afford to do so.”
Myth: The 40 million to 50 million uninsured do not get health care.
Fact: The National Center for Policy Analysis estimates that uninsured people get about $1,500 of free health care per year, or $6,000 per family of four.
Fact: An Urban Institute study found that 25 percent of the uninsured already qualify for government health insurance programs.
Myth: People will remain uninsured without government assistance.
Fact: The Congressional Budget Office says that 45 percent of the uninsured will be insured within four months. CBO Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin also said that the frequent claim of 40+ million Americans lacking insurance is an “incomplete and potentially misleading picture of the uninsured population.”
Fact: Liberal non-profit Kaiser Family Foundation put the number of uninsured Americans who do not qualify for government programs and make less than $50,000 a year between 8.2 million and 13.9 million. (The 8.2 million figure includes only those uninsured for two years or more.)
Fact: CBO analysis found that 36 million people would remain uninsured even if the Senate’s $1.6 trillion health care plan is passed.Reason 3. Democrats desire to ram the legislation through congress.
We have commented here many times on the "rush to bad legislation" technique perfected by this congress. Haste makes waste and this Congress and President are experts at waste. And the citizens have caught on. The know their legislators are not reading the legislation and are wondering why. They are also wondering who is really writing the legislation and suspect that there is far more influence coming from lobbyists than from many representatives. They KNOW that they do not have a seat at the negotiating table yet George Soros does and they don't like it.
Reason 4. You reap what you sow.
Democrats have long espoused that dissent is important to the democracy and they are correct. But once normal people start dissenting, all of a sudden they don't like it. For years they have dispatched unions, Code Pink, Al Sharpton, Jessie "extortion" Jackson and a variety of other organnized protestors to events to put pressure on various entuities and lawmakers. Regular people have woken up and after 7 years of watching these organnized groups protest George Bush, they have decided not to stand up for themselves.
Reason 5. Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have disdain for the citizens of this country.
We all know when we are being talked down to and mocked. Barack Obama tries to demonized those who do not agree lockstep with everything he espouses. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid declared in the USA Today that the protestors are fake and un-American. Here is a statistic for you. Since I work in New York City, I know a lot of people who are very left of center. I also have numerous conservative friends. I do not know one single person who has attended a peace demonstration during the Bush years. And I know at least 10 who have attended tea parties or town halls on healthcare. And they didn't get bussed in-the drove their SUV's.
Astroturf. I don't think so. All of this is pissing people off. Assuming the Democrats continue on their current course, it will get worse long before it gets better.
Labels: 50 million uninsured, astroturf, Barack Obama, Conservative protests, healthcare town hall, Nancy Pelosi
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