Americans Like Their Private Insurance

Daniel Dale at CNN:

If you ask people for their views on the cost of their health care, people on Medicare are much more likely to be satisfied than people on private insurance. In a Gallup poll in 2018, 51% of people on private insurance said they were satisfied with the total cost they paid. That was much lower than the 70% of satisfied people on Medicare or Medicaid.

If you ask people for their views on health insurance corporations, they tend to be negative. In a 2015 poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 44% said they had a favorable view of these companies, while 51% said they had an unfavorable view.

Sanders can point to figures like these to bolster his case.

But the story changes when you ask people for their views on their own private insurance plans rather than about insurance companies or costs. In poll after poll, for years, Americans using such plans have expressed positive opinions.
...

More than 155 million Americans received private coverage through employers in 2017, or about 58% of people under age 65.

Last year, the Kaiser Family Foundation asked people who have employer plans to give their coverage a grade. Twenty-five percent gave it an "A," or excellent; 43% said "B," or good. These results -- about two-thirds rating their employer coverage positively -- have been quite consistent dating back to 1997, according to data provided to CNN by Kaiser.

In a Gallup poll last year, 85% of people who used private insurance said the quality of their health care was "excellent" or "good," versus 79% of people on Medicare or Medicaid. (Gallup combined the Medicare and Medicaid groups in its report on the poll.) When people were asked about their coverage itself rather than the quality of care, 79% of people on Medicare or Medicaid said it was excellent or good, versus 70% of people on private insurance.

This Place Doesn't Turn Out Socialists

"This place doesn't turn out socialists."  -- Soviet agent Philip Jennings (Matthew Rhys) in the pilot of The Americans.

Gallup finds that 96 percent of Americans have a positive image of small business, and only 25 percent have a positive image of socialism.

Even though Bernie Sanders, a self-described "Democratic socialist," has generated strong support for his presidential campaign, Americans' image of socialism is no better now than it was six years ago. Thirty-five percent of Americans have a positive view of the term socialism, similar to what was found in 2012 and 2010. The 60% who have a positive view of capitalism is also unchanged from six years ago.

Americans Don't Want Single-Payer

Frank Newport writes at Gallup:

Sanders' proposed system would essentially eliminate employer-based insurance. Our data show little difference between the people who get their healthcare from their employer and those who get it from Medicare/Medicaid/government, in terms of their ratings of their healthcare coverage and the quality of their healthcare. Both groups are quite positive about these aspects of their healthcare, but there is somewhat more dissatisfaction regarding healthcare costs among those with employer-based systems. Some 66% of those whose insurance is government-based are positive about its costs, compared with 53% of those who get it from a private source. Still, the majority are satisfied even with the costs of employer-based systems.

Two important data points provide additional context for a single-payer system.

• Americans are split on the idea of whether the government should have the responsibility "to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage," with 51% saying yes and 47% saying no.
• A second long-standing Gallup trend question gets more to the heart of the matter, asking Americans if they prefer a government-run healthcare system or a system based mostly on private health insurance. Here the tilt is toward the private system -- 55% private system and 41% government-run system in our last November asking. 

Bottom line: It doesn't appear that Sanders has a strongly auspicious bed of favorable public opinion in which to plant his idea of a government-run single-payer healthcare system. Half of Americans don't think the government should be responsible for making sure people have healthcare, and more than half say that, in theory, they prefer a system run by private health insurance companies rather than by the federal government.

Federalist 10 and the 2016 Election

D.J. Tice writes at The Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

The founding fathers said there would be days like this. On the eve of the 2016 Iowa caucuses — which will plunge America into a maelstrom of election contests sweeping us dizzyingly toward actually choosing a new president — the understated warning from the chief author of our Constitution clangs like a fire bell.

Enlightened statesmen will not always be at the helm.

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Yet even if these appetites produce a Sanders or a Trump presidency, the [Jesse] Ventura precedent suggests it might deliver another surprise, and a welcome one. In his official acts (as opposed to his celebrity antics), Gov. Ventura largely steered a mainstream course, delegating vigorously to decent public servants he placed in key jobs. A President Trump or Sanders might adjust to reality, too.

That’s likely, because America’s complex and cumbersome system of government constrains every office holder, making it improbable that even a champion demagogue could enact destabilizing innovations, at least not without major compromise.

This is why debates over the proper boundaries on a president’s executive orders matter. It’s why the much-criticized Senate filibuster, which makes passing controversial laws difficult, shouldn’t be carelessly discarded. It’s why limits should be enforced on a president’s war powers and on the government’s right to spy on citizens. It’s even why we must question tough-on-crime measures like the psychiatric commitment of sex offenders after they’ve served their prison terms.

An Agnostic for President?

Aaron Blake writes at The Washington Post:

Much of the attention paid to Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign has to do with the s-word: Can a socialist be elected president? How much of a socialist is he? What exactly is socialism?

What many haven't picked up on is that a Sanders presidency would be a first in a couple other ways. First, Sanders would be our first Jewish president. And second, while Sanders is culturally Jewish, he has said that he's "not particularly religious" and has been described by some as agnostic. Labels aside, what we do know is that he would be our first president who hasn't publicly professed to a belief in God.

Blake quotes a Pew writeup:

Two of the most famous presidents in American history had no formal religious affiliation. The first, Thomas Jefferson, lost his faith in orthodox Christianity at an early age, but continued to believe in an impersonal God as the creator of the universe. Jefferson famously edited the New Testament by removing references to the miracles and leaving in Jesus’ teachings.

The second, Abraham Lincoln, was raised in a religious household and spoke frequently about God (particularly as president), but never joined a church. Scholars have long debated Lincoln’s beliefs, including the question of whether or not he was a Christian, and some aspects of his faith remain a mystery.

Lincoln is not the only president for whom there is some uncertainty surrounding his affiliation and beliefs. Some presidents were more private than others about their religious leanings and some may have evolved in their beliefs during their life. 

Fifty percent of Americans would not vote for a socialist for president and forty percent would not vote for an atheist.  An agnostic?  We don't know...

On the Way Out, Biden Hits Clinton and Sanders

Dan Merica writes at CNN:

When Vice President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that he would not run for president, he did so with a very clear message for Hillary Clinton.

He faulted some Democrats who "look at Republicans as our enemies."

The line, which Biden also used on Tuesday, is a direct knock against Clinton, who described Republicans as among her enemies at the first Democratic primary debate earlier this month.

But that was not the only subtle message the vice president had for a 2016 Democrat on Wednesday.

Shortly before his line admonishing labeling Republicans "enemies," Biden said, "I don't believe, like some do, that it is naive to talk to Republicans."

That appears very clearly directed at Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who has repeatedly called President Barack Obama naive for believing Republicans wanted to work with him when he came into office in 2009.

At an August 24 town hall in New Hampshire, Sanders told the audience that "the biggest mistake Barack Obama made" was not keeping his supporters together after his 2008 election and thinking that Republicans wanted to work with him.