Force-Fed Their Own Dog Food
Wednesday, December 04, 2013
Many blue state voters who supported ObamaCare are about to be force-fed their
own dog food, according to
Dick Morris:
In red states, Republican insurance commissioners have generally decided to let insurers and their customers cooperate to waive the cancellations. But the true believers in the blue states who serve as insurance commissioners have largely refused. Thus, the very voters the Democratic Party depends on are the most likely to continue to be forced to cancel the policies they want, despite their wishes and protests.This may be true, but I am less sanguine than Morris about this being anything but what reader Jim May is fond of calling a "teachable moment".
It's hard to think of a more shortsighted policy than to anger your own voters in so heavy-handed a way. Now the arguments about big government and the heavy hand of regulation will no longer be theoretical to Democratic voters. They will be forced to endure the cancellation of their own healthcare plans. [bold added]
Why? The Democrats have two big advantages still with such voters: (1) They will play "blame the Republicans" to an always-receptive audience; and (2) This will be relatively easy for them to do because they (and this audience), being altruists, think that ObamaCare is the "right" thing to do. The GOP will lose long term unless it stops perseverating on the poor roll-out of a system that can't help but be bad -- because it is designed to forcibly nullify individual judgement throughout the process of caring for one's health. Until one rejects the premise that we are our brothers' keepers, one will not muster the moral courage or the indignant outrage to ask: "By what right does some clueless third party dictate to me out of the blue how and whom I pay for medical care?" The GOP should be doing this already, and should be helping these voters see that, if anything, they are not mad enough bout their policy cancellations.
Morris has found an opportunity to score, but the ball won't find the net on its own.
-- CAV
3 comments:
Though to be fair, Morris was only talking about the 2014 election cycle (almost as far ahead as conservatives are able to think) and he is probably right about that.
In the short term, anger overcomes guilt. In the long term, not so much.
The real long-term issue is that the Republican’s and Democrats agree on everything that matters.
Hi Gus,
Exactly!
This from New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot via Allahpundit.
I’ll leave you with this from New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot, who was grumpy about her expensive new ObamaCare “comprehensive” plan until she remembered her “values”:
To be clear: I’m not happy to be paying more in the short term, and it may be a struggle at times. I wish other self-employed people didn’t have to shoulder so much of the burden. I wish we had a single-payer system, but that seems wildly unrealistic. And the new health-care law exists for the common good, not just the individual consumer. Vaccination provides more effective protection—so-called herd immunity—when more of us are vaccinated. Universal health insurance works in something like the same way: we are better off as a society—more compassionate, but also healthier—when we can all get the care we need.
So yes, I’ll subsidize someone else’s prenatal coverage, in a more effective way than I’ve been doing by default under the current system, in which too many pregnant women show up in emergency rooms without having had such care, creating problems for themselves and their babies, and all sorts of costs for taxpayers. And I’ll remember to be relieved that my own access to health care is guaranteed. But they had better work out the problems with the A.C.A.; if they don’t, and it doesn’t fulfill its promise of insuring the uninsured, I’m really going to feel like a chump.
Apparently the Dems still have the power of the moral argument. Because the GOP won't challenge the basis of it.
c. andrew
Steve,
You are correct: that both parties are in basic agreement on everything is a big problem.
C.,
Thanks for mentioning that article. I ran into it myself shortly after posting, but hadn't had time to even skim it and add a note about it being evidence in proof of my claim. I see that it is as "good" in that regard as I thought it would be.
We'll know we're winning the day THESE "values voters" wind up on the defensive.
Gus
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