Via GFR who remarks (correctly) that it explains a lot, Celinda Lake tells Matt Stoller that fully 96 percent of voters -- as opposed to people at large -- have health insurance. This obviously looks like a substantial challenge to building a political campaign around a promise to help out the uninsured.
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This Seems Like a Problem
14 Nov 2007 01:18 am
Comments (28)
Not really a challenge. People have health insurance, yes. But they can't leave their job when they'd like for fear of losing it. They aren't confident that it will cover everything if they get sick. There's plenty of insecurity and unhappiness with insurance among the insured, in other words.
Good point, Kenny.
And if there's anything that the Johnny does freakishly well, it's making people in the classes that usually vote feel concern about people in the classes that usually don't.
Reading more carefully: it makes it hard to build a campaign around only the uninsured, leaving off any kind of more sweeping health policy.
Jeez. It can get pretty frustrating to be in favor of policies that would benefit people who can't even be bothered voting in their own obvious self-interest.
Maybe the solution is for Dems to encourage illegal aliens to vote, since they comprise perhaps 30%-40% of the uninsured.
Source, Fred?
The fact that most voters have health insurance doesn't make it any less immoral that almost 50 million people in America lack health insurance, including what, roughly 4 million voters?
John,
Up until last week, I had gone three years without health insurance. Like most uninsured Americans, I was uninsured not because America is immoral, but because I didn't feel like paying for it and I was reasonably healthy, so I took a calculated risk and went without it. Mind you, I didn't go without health care. On the handful of occasions I needed to see a physician, I was able to see one the same day and paid out of pocket; I probably spent a total of $500 over the last three years on my medical care.
Now I'm covered under my girlfriend's employer's insurance as her domestic partner (thanks for that, btw, gay people). Total cost for both of us? ~$90 per month, with $10 or $15 co-pays. I can't imagine we'd get a better deal under a socialized system. Which is why we wouldn't have a problem with programs to help the uninsured, but we would both be against any program to scrap everyone's coverage and replace it with a socialized system.
Shorter Fred:
What's all the fuss, Gus? I played Russian roulette and didn't get hurt, why shouldn't everybody?
I thought that we had decided to abandon the self interested voter hypothesis; it doesn't have really any empirical support you know.
Sorry but I'm with john. Her source? I'm 57, college degreed, a rabid voter, very white last time I looked, and haven't had insurance since 1995.
Fred,
oh, man, oh, man. You really shouldn't have posted that business about how you went without insurance until you managed to mooch some off your girlfriend, if you wanted to preserve your credibility to comment on this issue, anywhere, again.
Incidentally, it's mathematically impossible for illegal immigrants to constitute 30-40% of the uninsured. The US Census figures there are 47 million uninsured in the US. Of those, 10 million are not US citizens. So, right there, that's a little over 20%. Of those 10 million, it's not clear how many are in the US legally and how many illegally. One would assume that few of them are illegal immigrants because the Census figures are based on monthly Census surveys of 78,000 US households, and illegal immigrants don't tend to voluntarily do long interviews with census workers. But even if a quarter were illegal immigrants, that'd be perhaps 6% of the uninsured.
Of course it's possible that the Census is missing vast numbers of illegal immigrants and that most of them are uninsured. But that would mean that far more than 47 million people in the US are uninsured. And to get to 30%, you'd be talking about something like 25 million uninsured illegal immigrants, bringing the total number of uninsured up over 70 million.
Fred's example is truly inspiring! I am therefore proposing a "National Girlfriend Initiative" by which we keep premiums manageable by providing domestic partners with (generous existing plans) for all uninsured Americans.
You know, if an illegal immigrant makes Lou Dobbs and the cast of Fox blissfully happy by contracted The Plague, I'd really rather he see a doctor and get it identified before handling my food.
Of course I mean "The Plague" in the Camus sense of a really really bad plague, rather than the bubonic sense of a non-foodborne epidemic.
James Gary for President!
I think it points to the fact that the better messaging is to bring up the fact that uninsured cost insured people money and are mooching off the system. That is, of course, if that's true. My assumption and reading leads me to believe that it is. The Fred that actually gets hurt doesn't just get tossed in the dumpster behind the hospital. He gets treated and then sent to a collection agency.
I think it points to the fact that the better messaging is to bring up the fact that uninsured cost insured people money and are mooching off the system. That is, of course, if that's true. My assumption and reading leads me to believe that it is. The Fred that actually gets hurt doesn't just get tossed in the dumpster behind the hospital. He gets treated and then sent to a collection agency.
Well, as long as you insist on hold elections on days where most Americans have to work, and closing polls a few short hours after they get home, you're going to continue to see elections where a whole lot of people are unable to vote. Not because of poll tests or taxes, but because the powers that be deliberately drive down turn-out by not making election day a holiday.
Kenny raises a good point, although the nineteenth amendment was (I believe) approved by state legislators rather than directly by the voters. For a politician, voting rights would be kind of a Prisoners' Dilemma situation: If both sides denied women the right to vote both sides would "win," but the first side to "defect" and grant women voting rights would earn their gratitude and thus gain an advantage.
Also, female suffrage came first to the Western states. IIRC suffrage was granted to attract women (who were in short supply) to live on the frontier.
"The Fred that actually gets hurt doesn't just get tossed in the dumpster behind the hospital. He gets treated and then sent to a collection agency."
Or to bankruptcy. Our system has made bankruptcy the cornerstone of a really, really crappy universal insurance scheme.
If Fred gets sick and doesn't have insurance (or loses his insurance after he gets sick), he will still get treatment. Then, when the medical bills force Fred into bankruptcy (as they do to approximately one million Americans each year) the costs of his treatment are absorbed by the system and translate into higher medical bills and more expensive credit for everyone else.
In the end, Fred gets his care and the costs are paid by everyone who pays for their medical care (through insurance or otherwise) or consumes credit. Hence, really, really crappy universal insurance.
"Now I'm covered under my girlfriend's employer's insurance as her domestic partner (thanks for that, btw, gay people)."
You are welcome and, btw, welcome to adulthood.
"Like most uninsured Americans, I was uninsured not because America is immoral, but because I didn't feel like paying for it and I was reasonably healthy, so I took a calculated risk and went without it."
Please provide the source that suggest that "most" uninsured are as reckless and stingy as you are. Of course, I'm VERY skeptical that you could afford decent coverage prior to your current relationship.
"Total cost for both of us? ~$90 per month, with $10 or $15 co-pays. I can't imagine we'd get a better deal under a socialized system."
The reason you have those rates is because the risks have been spread over a large population, some healthy, some sick. That's the idea behind universal coverage (which Leo notes we have a warped version of right now).
Now that you have insurance, watch your coverage go down as your rates go up because your health care dollars are going to pay for people without health insurance.
I think the issue that resonates with insured voters is cost. Health care costs a fortune in this country and the cost keeps going up %5 to 15% a year. That is unsustainable and many employers are passing on the cost to the employees. We have health care through my wife and pay $460 a month. A few years ago it was a quarter of that. Cost is the way to get voters attention.
I'm with cw -- and add in the fear of losing the insurance. I have really great insurance -- but I'm a contract employee, and my contract is up in June. Then Cobra -- which will be prohibitive, let me tell you -- and then....the abyss. Even though I have insurance, the insecurity of my current situation is terrifying -- and since I know I will have to buy insurance in the future, I live in terror of marring my medical record with an ailment, so the insecurity of my future ability to purchase insurance is terrifying. So I'm in the 96% who are insured and vote, but let me tell you, Iraq can go fuck itself -- my voting issue is health insurance, all the way.
Actually, the people who will benefit most from a universal health care system are those currently insured. Politicians keep talking the uninsured and getting people access to health insurance, as if this is the real problem. It's not.
The real problem is our screwed up insurance system in which insurers have every incentive in the world to deny you coverage, drop you from coverage on a technicality when you get sick, and make your live a living hell of complex bills when you really do get sick. And if you have a pre-existing condition, got help you if you lose your job and can't afford COBRA. Also, God help you if you get really sick and use up your lifetime benefits in your insurance program.
Smart politicians will sell national health care not as a charitable deed to the poor, but as a way for the middle class to give themselves an enormous benefit--better health care results for far less money.
Even you free market types should like the idea. People who aren't worried about losing health care will be more free to quit their jobs and take the risk of starting their own business. And businesses will find it easier to hire people because they won't have to subsidize their health care.
And Fred, I guarantee you that $90 is not the full cost of your insurance. Your girlfriend's employer is likely paying much more.
"Even you free market types should like the idea. People who aren't worried about losing health care will be more free to quit their jobs and take the risk of starting their own business."
That's why there's so much more entrepreneurship in France than there is here.
Amen, Lisa! I second every word of your post. Thank you.
Comments closed November 28, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Well, on the other hand, 100% of the people who voted to guarantee women's suffrage were able to vote themselves.
Posted by Kenny | November 14, 2007 1:30 AM