A lot of liberals — see, for instance, Josh Marshall — think the appropriate response to a Supreme Court rejection of the individual mandate would be for progressives to pursue single-payer health care. Jonathan Bernstein and Jamelle Bouie think that’s silly, because, in their view, if this Court can find a heretofore unexpected rationale for invalidating the Obama health care law, the Court will find a way to invalidate single payer as well.
But I don’t think we’re ever going to find out whether that’s true, at least not for decades. Why? This is why:
In U.S., Fear of Big Government at Near-Record Level
Americans’ concerns about the threat of big government continue to dwarf those about big business and big labor, and by an even larger margin now than in March 2009. The 64% of Americans who say big government will be the biggest threat to the country is just one percentage point shy of the record high, while the 26% who say big business is down from the 32% recorded during the recession….
(Click chart to enlarge.)
Notice the trend. We always fear “big government” the most.
We’re Americans. We love the government programs we’ve grown accustomed to — Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, and so on — but we hate government. And we have no idea that that makes no sense.
The corpocracy and the right-wiong noise machine are hell-bent on keeping us this way (and would love to get us to reject even the government programs we like). Meanwhile, Democratic politicians won’t make an affirmative case for government, and often don’t work very hard (especially at the state and local level) to make sure government programs work well.
And I wouldn’t count on future support for large government programs like single payer, either. Think about it: Who’s the one politician now generating excitement among Americans under thirty? Ron Paul.
We have to make average Americans believe government is the solution in this case, and we have to fight vested interests to the death. In theory, it could be done. In practice, I don’t believe it’s possible anytime soon. If you disagree, start working on changing ordinary Americans’ minds about government now. It’s the necessary first step.
(X-posted at No More Mister Nice Blog.)
at least labor has been crushed so low that no one fears them anymore.
Health insurance costs are not a huge problem for most people under 30. Who are the 35-50 crowd supporting? The ones with families who, other than seniors, visit the doctor most frequently.
Change that to “Republican.” Cause the politician who’s generating the excitement is Barack Obama. Also, they’re not excited enough because Ron Paul is getting his ass kicked.
Moreover, the reason they support him isn’t about government, it’s about drugs and war. If Democrats want to secure our votes, they should commit to demilitarization (LOL!), and end the drug war (also a pretty big lol, but Central America isn’t going to be going along with it much longer, with Guatemala leading the way).
Ron Paul is supported by dumbass idiots who see one tiny facet of his melange of insanity, and call that the whole person. He’s pro-drugs and anti-war. Good on him. That’s about 5% of his ideas.
He is anti-woman, forced-birth, anti-insurance, anti-compassion, pro-gold standard, anti-fed, and pro-Mitt Romney. That’s about 80%.
Paul is basically setting his son up to gain his mantle in 4 years.
No, it makes perfect sense. The American aversion to Big Government doesn’t have anything to do with socialism or communism. It all starts and ends with a word that begins with ‘r’ and ends with -eparations.
The general white public tolerates (and binges) on welfare spending on themselves, but has never, ever, been excited to extend that charity to the black community. As long as “big government” can take “their money” and give it to “those people,” we have a political problem. It’s not ignorance of the issues. It’s latent and long-perpetuated hate.
Once we find yourselves an electorate that no longer despises having to look out for and provide for the common welfare across all racial lines, you’ll find that that paranoia towards government will lose its intensity. Until then, it will continue to be a cyclical phenomenon where Big Government is the “most serious problem” facing the country up until a majority of the electorate is convinced they’ve put in office someone who won’t show favor to black people (Nixon, Reagan, Dubya).
Boy, if only there was some sort of Democratic politician who endlessly reaffirmed some sort of liberal orthodoxy and philosophy with every speech he made, whether it be about taxes, or the budget, or health care, or inequality, etc. And maybe he’d even have a pathological focus on demonstrating the efficiency and transparency and frugality and technocratic virtue of each and every policy proposal he enacted. That’d be the day! If only a guy like that could have been elected in 2008. Think about how different everything would be today!
/mindsplosion.
What.
European developments also suggest that the more “others” there are, the more this anti-social legislation feeling grows.
I’m getting sick of these baseless prophesies of defeat. They’re so widespread among liberal outlets that one begins to wonder what’s behind them.
I think a credible case can be made that striking down the individual mandate and leaving the rest alone could be the best possible outcome. It would send the problem of fixing the existing law back to Congress where it belongs. There wouldn’t be a whole lot of options:
1- Try to repeal the bill. Unlikely to get 60 votes in the Senate, or to escape Obama’s veto. Suddenly the disgusting filibuster rule is strangling the Reps. Contrary to the vague “government is the problem” survey, Americans strongly favor the preexisting condition, insurance for the young, health clinics, and other social provisions of the law. If the Reps tried to repeal them, the Dems would have a grand opportunity for a landslide election.
2- Find a way to fulfill the obligation to fund a standing law. Most minimal, change the penalty to a tax that’s waived for those who buy insurance on their own, and applied to a pool that pays for the uninsured. It’s a clumsy kludge, but would meet the letter of the SC requirement, probably.
3- Refuse to fund the bill. Hello constitutional crisis and a political bonanza for the left. Insurancecos threaten to go out of business absent giant government subsidies and mandated patronage. Arguments that private insurance is the answer go out the window.
4- Introduce medicare-for-all, single-payer, or similar legislation, pushed as the only remedy for what the Court and the Right have wrought. Make it clear that this is the only way to keep the preexisting and other wildly popular parts of Obamacare, since private insurance can’t/won’t cover them. The absence of the individual mandate actually makes the arguments for the legislation much simpler and easier to sell. Finance it with a general tax increase or raise the existing Medicare tax and/or ceiling.
The hand wringers keep going on about the current law’s unpopularity as proof that their doomsday scenarios will come to pass. The reality is that the opposition to HCR as it stands comes from across the political/ideological spectrum. Nobody likes the mandate. Getting rid of it would boost support from the left side of the line and create strong majorties favoring health care reform.
It will be a fight, but an eminently winnable one without the millstone of the mandate. The only real question, as always, is whether the Dems/liberals/left will have the guts, energy, motivation, and political savvy to make it happen. That’s where the rest of us come in.
It’s for these very reasons I would be very surprised if they found the individual mandate unconstitutional without finding the whole law unconstitutional.
I don’t know — this is a very political court. Wiping out every benefit Obamacare offers would bring them public attacks like they haven’t experienced since Bush v Gore and Citizens United. How much more crumbling of public approval are they willing to endure? Deleting the whole law would be impossible to justify on constitutional grounds. Are they willing to finally admit that they are motivated purely by partisanship? I kinda doubt it.
Not that I’m disagreeing, but the justices have tenure for life — are they really bothered by public attacks? For example, has Clarence Thomas resigned for the conflict-of-interest issues surround him and his wife? The same things that motivated the conservative justices to rule as they did in Bush v Gore and Citizens United would seem — to me — to make it clear that they just. don’t. care. what people (unlike them) think.
I’m getting sick of these baseless prophesies of defeat. They’re so widespread among liberal outlets that one begins to wonder what’s behind them.
I’m not a doctor, but having been a patient with the condition, I’d suspect un- or under-treated anxiety disorders.
Or maybe just a realistic reading of the last 30+ years of U.S. history, in which the right-wingers have cleaned our clocks over and over again.
A realistic reading of the past doesn’t necessarily have much predictive power.
I also think that the fear of Big Gummint doesn’t need to pose much of an obstacle to single-payer healthcare. I think single-payer would be a pretty easy sell as “Medicare for all.”
Hell, some of the brain trust that would have a problem with big government healthcare didn’t know Medicare is a government program.
They’d sure as hell be informed of that as soon as the survival of the (deep-pocketed) private health insurance industry depended on them knowing it.
I think single-payer would be a pretty easy sell as “Medicare for all.”
HR 676 couldn’t get a majority of House Dems as co-sponsors….. and the House is more liberal than the Senate.
Your definition of ‘pretty easy’ must differ from mine.
Pardon, I meant among the electorate, not the politicians.
the last 30+ years of U.S. history, in which the right-wingers have cleaned our clocks over and over again.
That brings us to 1982.
I find that the most pessimistic liberals always think it’s the 1980s. You know the type – the ones who go into full panic mode whenever a Republican says something, because they think it’s still 1988.
You cannot meaningfully put the Reagan Revolution and 1994 into the same category as the past 7 years.
And that goes far to explain why Democrats in 2008 did not come close to picking Kucinich, the only Medicare for all candidate.
It was always between the two Hillarycare/Romneycare/Obamacare candidates.
There is no support in the country or in Congress or in the White House for single payor and no way to put it there in the foreseeable future.
Hell, if the Supremes struck down Medicaid and Medicare while they were at it, just for fun, there might not be support in the country or the Congress to overcome that by court packing, impeachment, or a constitutional amendment.
Medicaid alone? Not a chance.
Medicare? Maybe; but maybe not.