Editorial

Medicare for All support plummets once people learn how it works

Voters are in a strange mood. More Republicans are protective of government entitlements in the past, but don’t want taxes to go up to protect them. And while more Democrats seem to be fired up about wildly expanding entitlements, no matter how high taxes get, polls suggest the picture is considerably more complicated.

Democrats have the rhetorical upper hand. As old-line Republicans have feared, they’re using public sentiment to move the goal posts. Just a few years ago, so-called “Medicare for All” was a fringe view at best. Now, going into 2020, it is mainstream on the left. The idea is polling surprisingly well. But once people get a sense of the price tag, its popularity crashes.

According to a new Kaiser Family Foundation survey, a majority now favors a national health plan, even when it’s referred to as Medicare for All. That share rises to over 70 percent when the plan is said to “guarantee health insurance as a right for all.”

In one sense, those numbers reflect the appeal of political fantasy. It’s not health insurance Medicare guarantees, but health coverage. And it’s not insurance Democrats want to deem a right — it’s coverage.

That’s why it’s so telling that the favorability numbers for Medicare for All plunge so dramatically when pollsters share the details. When respondents were told private health insurance would go away and taxes would go up, fewer than 2 in 5 remained supportive. When they were told medical care would be restricted, in the form of delayed testing and treatment, the ratio sank to just over 1 in 4.

Two important conclusions can be drawn from these stark results. First, Medicare for All and other sweeping health coverage entitlements lose their political appeal the minute people confront even the most basic conditions that apply to securing them.

Second, and even more tellingly, these turnoffs aren’t blunted by any appeal to health coverage as a human or American right. Either voters really don’t want to make sacrifices to enjoy a healthcare right, or they don’t really believe coverage is actually a right.

Democrats are seriously mistaken about the political and emotional appeal of Medicare for All. Defenders of free markets should react accordingly.

— Los Angeles Daily News,

Media News Group

Democrats are seriously mistaken about the political and emotional appeal of Medicare for All. Defenders of free markets should react accordingly.