Logic seems to play no role in the way many Americans think about important issues.
A timely example is Obamacare. We know that it is clearly and irrefutably working, yet close to a majority of Americans still disapprove of it.
Frankly, its success thus far is pretty phenomenal. Consider these facts:
The number of uninsured has dropped more than five percent.
State exchanges are working extremely well.
Republican states that refused to set up exchanges have lost millions of dollars, causing some to reconsider their initial decision.
No one can be refused insurance because of pre-existing conditions.
No one can be dropped because of getting sick.
Children can stay on their parents insurance until they turn 26 (a “life saver” for college students).
No annual or life-time caps on coverage means no one with insurance will go bankrupt because of medical denials.
Freedom of choice re doctors remains the same.
Requiring insurance has not been met with massive resistance by young adults.
Premium rates have been lowered for most people with better coverage, and increases for some have been equal to or less than the annual average increases before Obamacare.
It has not been a “job killer” as all its opponents predicted it would be.
Businesses have not cut back on employee work hours because of increased health insurance costs, though opponents insisted they would.
And the latest news is that over a half million people who lost their healthcare because of job loss or illness this year now have insurance through state and federal exchanges.
Before the law was passed none of the above existed. Instead, we had a broken healthcare system that was costing more every year and doing less, was viewed by all experts as economically unsustainable, and was denying millions and millions of people health insurance.
And yet Obamacare still struggles to gain support by a large majority of people.
When I ask myself why, here is what I come up with:
Conservatives still don’t like it is because they believe it is government run. It is not. Private insurance still runs the system. It just has different rules it has to follow.
Some people are just uniformed or ill-informed about it. They have no idea how it works or what its goals are. They are like the people on Medicare before the law was passed who kept saying they wanted the government to keep its hands off their insurance. Go figure.
Some don’t like Obamacare precisely because it is working. They can’t stand President Obama so they naturally don’t want anything he does to succeed.
But despite what people think, the Affordable Care Act is working. It still needs improvement, but that will have to wait because Republicans swallowed the poison pill about it a long time ago and have no capacity at this time to think about what is good for the country.
But the law is now in place, and I believe its success will help create an environment that will gradually lead most Americans to see that healthcare is a right, not a privilege, and that it is morally beneath us as a people to perpetuate a system that does not make that right universal.
That day cannot come too soon.
Nice succinct summary of the facts that the “willfully ignorant” and the Obama haters and are unable or unwilling to accept.
An excellent assessment of the current state of the Affordable Care Act, far different from the catastrophe predicted by the Chicken Little naysayers on the right.
Couldn’t agree more, Jan. The level of hatred towards Obama by many people seems to contradict all logic and reason.
I wish LinnPosts could be published in every newspaper in the country. You write so clearly and wisely. Opinion seems to rule more often than facts in this country which is mind boggling to me. As the folksong says…”When will they ever learn? When will they ever learn?”
Laura,
On a Sunday, I will simply say “Amen” to your wish!
Thanks for the encouragement, Laura. And let’s hope “learning” will soon become an American value again.