The health care reform generation gap
Reader, I’ll hope you forgive my extended absence. With a move from Brooklyn, NY to Ann Arbor, MI, a trip home to NC, and a rafting weekend in Colorado all squeezed in the last half of July, I had little time to keep up with politics and culture, and even less time and wi-fi to try and write about it. But I’ll do better, I promise. At least until the next move.
Every time I go on vacation and come back, it seems like politics has gotten, for lack of a better term, lots more stupider in the interim. I was on my honeymoon in Italy last year when the frothing mobs Palin rally videos started surfacing. I seriously debated staying overseas. I feel the same way drifting back into political awareness now, with the birther movement becoming a mainstream right-wing phenomenon and obnoxious teabaggers breaking up meetings to loudly clamor for the status quo in health care. Now, some of the former group bleeds into some of the latter, and a good deal of the rest are recruited by industry flacks. But fringe extremists and industry astroturfers aside, it’s obvious that a lot of the protests do tap into real opposition to reform that Obama will have to contend with in his fight to get a decent bill passed.
What’s intriguing is that this opposition falls squarely on the geriatric side of the generational divide, at least according to a recent CNN poll that showed a slim plurality of support for Obama’s plan:
“Obama’s plan is most popular among younger Americans and least popular among senior citizens,” CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. “A majority of Americans over the age of 50 oppose Obama’s plan; a majority of those under 50 support it.”
As Josh Marshall pointed out yesterday, this is interesting because most people over 50 already have guaranteed single-payer government health care. Did they forget Medicare was a government program somehow? After all, supply-side architect Arthur Laffer seems to have had a memory lapse about that a couple of days ago on CNN:
“If you like the Post Office and the Department of Motor Vehicles and you think they’re run well, just wait till you see Medicare, Medicaid and health care done by the government.”
But I tend to think most seniors are smarter than most right-wing economists, and they know perfectly well it’s a government program they’re benefiting from. Maybe it’s a matter of worrying about losing what they already have. House GOP Leader John Boehner is banking on this, claiming that the Dem’s plan for universal health care will rely on Medicare cuts (failing to mention that Republicans would want government completely out of health care, leaving seniors to the whims of the market.) Could it be that seniors actually believe the right-wing claptrap about the plan making euthanasia counseling mandatory? Is their experience with Bush’s needlessly complicated Medicare Part D overhaul – with its insurance industry giveaways and incomprehensible “donut holes” -souring them on further tinkering with their entitlements? Is it just a reflection of the existing generational divide about Obama?
Personally, I have a hunch it’s a short-sighted – and frankly, selfish – desire to hold onto what they’ve already got, everybody else’s health be damned. But I’m open to other theories, and I’d love to see some more polling of seniors breaking down their reasoning a little more. Tell me what you think below.
[poll id="4"]
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Misinformation. Seniors are easily frightened by propaganda put out by the opposition (republican, conservatives, health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, etc.) to the O’Bama plan. For example, many of them believe that page 425 contains a requirement that they be tested every five years – actually, on page 425 of the plan is a provision that requires seniors to update every five years their status regarding whether they want to be sustained on life sustaining equipment etc sort of like giving seniors an opportunity to make a living will, which all should have but most probably don’t.
You’re on the right track. The senior concern (actually over 65 as the people between 50-65 are a whole different kettle of fish) is that medicare payments will be reduced to the point where their doctor may no longer take it. There is actually some basis in fact for this. Last year, 28% of Medicare recipients had difficulty finding a physician who accepted Medicare. So, this is the key basis upon which seniors are acting. Beyond that – yeah, they just are easily freaked out when change is on the horizon.
Information exchange is at the heart of the problem. The opponents of reform have done a much better job scaring the crap out of people than those in support have done defending. It’s time for those in support to start scaring the crap out of people with the message that failure to reform will mean a more difficult life in the future.
Well said.
In response to another comment. See in context »It goes beyond misinformation. Liberals and progressives always seem to think, “If they were only better informed…”
No, I think it’s much deeper than that. Our culture was infected with the virus known as “market populism” during the ’80s and (especially) ’90s, as chronicled in Thomas Frank’s “One Market Under God” (excerpted here): The notion that “government” is not the instrument of the people, but is the enemy of the people, and that markets are the truly democratic means of addressing social needs, “that in addition to being mediums of exchange, markets are mediums of consent.”
Look at the results of this Pew Survey, showing that age is directly related to distrust of government to solve problems: two-thirds of those in their 20s say gov’t should do more, while the majority of those over 45 say gov’t should do less.
Market populists can’t seem to see the irony in their hostility towards a government which may be, say, 60-80% corrupted by corporate interests, while they place their faith in a market system composed of 100% corporate interests (especially in the absence of the other countervailing force, labor unions). These ideologues reject the notion that “having created the conditions that make markets possible, democracy must also do all the things that markets undo or cannot do” (Benjamin Barber).
So even if older folks are more likely to be receiving government-provided or -subsidized health care, their anti-government ideology overwhelms any rational analysis based on facts. As Frank says, “in ideology all one requires is principle.” And who’s more self-enamored of their principles, more deeply invested in their faith, than Americans?
[...] we are a year later – Obama is President, and we’re fighting over health care reform. Poll after poll shows there is a generational divide over the President’s health care debate, with [...]