LogFAQs > #930548304

LordoftheMorons posted...

It's incorrect to say that you're throwing them off of insurance, but it's correct to state that you're telling them to give up insurance that they're familiar with in order for it to be replaced with something that you claim will be better. The question is then whether they trust you to deliver on that promise (which is a function not only of your intentions, but also of the competence of your implementation, and how robust the public plan is to sabotage*). In other words, you're asking people to take a big risk with something very important, and it's not a good idea to handwave that away as manufactured.

*What I'm thinking of here is sabotage when the GOP controls Congress. In particular, I think it's very likely that they would refuse to allow M4A to fund abortion.

I know! My grievance with the line that Buttigieg and the others launching this attack is that they're doing it in soundbite form which excises all that nuance! It's the line that you would see the GOP use to attack it to kill it and preserve the grotesque status quo. It is therefore extremely unhelpful to have it also used by those who are, at least nominally, in support of universal coverage.

I understand that its use is because it's effective as an attack vector by leveraging fear and uncertainty and because the media these days doesn't have the time or appetite for the required nuance but that doesn't absolve those launching the attack IMO.

Really, I think what you need from the single-payer side is to continue to educate the public on what it is and means - and Warren and Sanders have been doing that, albeit often under similar media constraints where the attention span isn't long enough sometimes to get deep into it - and stating "you don't trust the American people!" and "You're going to kick 140 million people who like their insurance off of it!" is actively harmful to that.

Now, I'm not saying it's the role of Buttigieg, Biden, etc. to defend single-payer when it is not a policy they support. However, I do think they should know enough to know what they're doing here and - again, I am speaking from a position sympathetic to single-payer so I'm not without bias on this - and it reeks of looking to score a personal political advantage at the cost of disingenuously characterizing the position of their rivals. They don't have to support or defend it, that would be nuts, but I don't think it's wrong to at least hold them to arguing against it in a fair way.
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