‘Medicare for All’ Will Terrify Voters

It sounds good until people realize it means losing their existing plans.

Medicare for All becomes less popular when people hear more about its possible effects. Support dropped to 37%, with about 60% opposed, when respondents were told it would “eliminate private health-insurance companies” or “require most Americans to pay more in taxes.” Support fell to 32% when respondents were alerted it would “threaten current Medicare.” And it crashed to 26% if those polled heard it would lead to “delays in people getting some medical tests and treatments.”

.. Names matter, too. A November 2017 Kaiser poll found that, without mentioning negative effects, “Medicare for All” drew a 62% favorable rating. But labeling the same idea “single-payer health insurance” dropped support to 48%. Calling it “socialized medicine” produced a nearly even split, 44% favorable to 43% negative.

Medicare for everyone may sound good to voters at first. But after sustained reflection—and Republican attacks—it will likely be soundly rejected. Most Americans do not want to surrender control of their health-care decisions to an impersonal bureaucracy in Washington.

.. And the $32.6 trillion figure could be low. Mr. Blahous says the tab may “be substantially greater,” since his analysis accepted both the “significant administrative and drug cost savings” estimated by Medicare-for-all advocates and reimbursement rates 40% less than what private health insurance pays today, on average. Mr. Blahous, a former public trustee for Social Security and Medicare, believes the savings would not materialize fully and the cuts in reimbursements are unsustainable.
.. Congressional supporters of the plan fear that nearly doubling the federal budget could sink their proposal. That’s why Sen. Bernie Sanders, the father of Medicare for All, refuses to say how much it will cost.
.. Still, Republicans could lose the public-opinion battle unless they prepare an organized offensive. This will require the persistent involvement of a White House that has shown itself ill-prepared for extended campaigns of explanation and persuasion. It also requires Republicans to highlight the proposal’s weaknesses. For example, they should find a way to stage a Senate vote on abolishing private health insurance to show how few Democrats are willing to back that—isolating that party’s hard-core Sandernistas.
.. Nor can Republicans merely stand on opposition to Medicare for All; it’s hard to beat something with nothing. The GOP also must lay out ideas to make health care better, more affordable and more accessible with choice, competition and markets.The rush by Democratic presidential candidates to embrace Medicare for All—and measures like “free” college, guaranteed jobs and universal basic income—may make the 2020 election a contest between promise-them-anything democratic socialism and free enterprise. The stakes don’t get much higher than that.

Jerry Falwell Jr. can’t imagine Trump ‘doing anything that’s not good for the country’

You said recently that conservatives and Christians should stop electing nice guys. Aren’t Christians supposed to be nice guys?

Of course, of course. But that’s where people get confused. I almost laugh out loud when I hear Democrats saying things like, “Jesus said suffer the little children to come unto me” and try to use that as the reason we should open up our borders.

It’s such a distortion of the teachings of Jesus to say that what he taught us to do personally — to love our neighbors as ourselves, help the poor — can somehow be imputed on a nation. Jesus never told Caesar how to run Rome. He went out of his way to say that’s the earthly kingdom, I’m about the heavenly kingdom and I’m here to teach you how to treat others, how to help others, but when it comes to serving your country, you render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s. It’s a distortion of the teaching of Christ to say Jesus taught love and forgiveness and therefore the United States as a nation should be loving and forgiving, and just hand over everything we have to every other part of the world. That’s not what Jesus taught. You almost have to believe that this is a theocracy to think that way, to think that public policy should be dictated by the teachings of Jesus.

So, the government you want is one free of religious association?

Yes. The government should be led by somebody who is going to do what’s in the best interest of the government and its people. And I believe that’s what Jesus thought, too.

In 2016 you wrote in a Washington Post editorial that voters in the 2010 and 2014 midterms sent a message they were “tired of the leftist agenda.” What message did voters in the 2018 midterms send?

This midterm, the president did better than the average president does in his first midterms. So I think the message is that the American people are happy with the direction the country is headed and happy with the economy, happy with our newfound respect in the world. It’s a better result than you normally see in the first midterms.

.. You and other white evangelical leaders have strongly supported President Trump. What about him exemplifies Christianity and earns him your support?

What earns him my support is his business acumen. Our country was so deep in debt and so mismanaged by career politicians that we needed someone who was not a career politician, but someone who’d been successful in business to run the country like a business. That’s the reason I supported him.

The deficit and debt have increased during his first two years.

Yeah, Congress, the spending bill that they forced on him in order to get the military spending up to where it needed to be — he said that would be the last time he signed one of those. But he had no choice because Obama had decimated the military, and it had to be rebuilt.

Is there anything President Trump could do that would endanger that support from you or other evangelical leaders?

No.

That’s the shortest answer we’ve had so far.

Only because I know that he only wants what’s best for this country, and I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically “conservative,” but it’s going to be what’s best for this country, and I can’t imagine him doing anything that’s not good for the country.

Is it hypocritical for evangelical leaders to support a leader who has advocated violence and who has committed adultery and lies often? I understand that a person can be forgiven their sins, but should that person be leading the country?

When Jesus said we’re all sinners, he really meant all of us, everybody. I don’t think you can choose a president based on their personal behavior because even if you choose the one that you think is the most decent — let’s say you decide Mitt Romney. Nobody could be a more decent human being, better family man. But there might be things that he’s done that we just don’t know about. So you don’t choose a president based on how good they are; you choose a president based on what their policies are. That’s why I don’t think it’s hypocritical.

There’s two kingdoms. There’s the earthly kingdom and the heavenly kingdom. In the heavenly kingdom the responsibility is to treat others as you’d like to be treated. In the earthly kingdom, the responsibility is to choose leaders who will do what’s best for your country. Think about it. Why have Americans been able to do more to help people in need around the world than any other country in history? It’s because of free enterprise, freedom, ingenuity, entrepreneurism and wealth. A poor person never gave anyone a job. A poor person never gave anybody charity, not of any real volume. It’s just common sense to me.

You’ve been criticized by some other evangelical leaders about your support for the president. They say you need to demand higher moral and ethical standards. You disagree with them on that?

It may be immoral for them not to support him, because he’s got African American employment to record highs, Hispanic employment to record highs. They need to look at what the president did for the poor. A lot of the people who criticized me, because they had a hard time stomaching supporting someone who owned casinos and strip clubs or whatever, a lot them have come around and said, “Yeah, you were right.” Some of the most prominent evangelicals in the country have said, “Jerry, we thought you were crazy, but now we understand.”

Those Who Don’t Understand Trump Are Doomed to Repeat Him

Conservatives are deeply split over the rise of Donald J. Trump. Some see it as apocalyptic; others as refreshing. But two pieces of conventional wisdom are largely unchallenged by either side.

First, Mr. Trump’s populist takeover of the Republican Party was shocking and unforeseeable. Second, love Trump or hate him, he has revealed important realities about the electorate, and Republicans must move toward more populist positions on issues such as trade and immigration or be left behind.

Both of these beliefs are mistaken

.. Census Bureau data show that from 2009 through 2014, only about the top fifth of the population saw any income growth while the bottom 80 percent have averaged no income growth at all.

.. German economists look at the effect of financial crises on politics, reviewing 800 elections over 140 years across 20 advanced economies. They found that, after a financial crisis, nationalistic populist parties and politicians, using language that often attributes blame to minorities and foreigners, typically increase their vote share by about 30 percent. There is no such effect after ordinary recessions.

.. Swedish voters rewarded a brand-new “New Democracy” party that focused heavily on law and order issues and proposed stringent restrictions on immigration.

.. With no simple solution for reviving equal opportunity, conventional politicians struggle with increasingly angry voters. Into this gap walk populists who specialize in identifying culprits: rich elites who are ripping you off; immigrants who want your job; free trade that’s killing our nation’s competitiveness. Their proposed solutions usually involve some combination of increased redistribution, protectionism and restrictionism.

.. Trade and immigration are the lightning rods, but these issues are not the real triggers of our political moment. The illegal immigrant population was 8 percent lower in 2014 than in 2007, and our trade deficit was lower in 2015 than before the Great Recession.

.. The real issue is weak, unevenly shared growth. If we addressed this issue, and if people felt their lives improving, the appetite for invective on secondary issues such as trade and immigration would dissipate.

.. Conservatives love to emphasize the need for higher economic growth, but have often missed the importance of more widely distributed growth. Leaders should set their focus on a system with more opportunity in the middle and bottom of the economy.

.. Throwing away free enterprise will neither solve our nation’s problems nor create enduring political victories. Only strong growth, evenly distributed, will do the trick.