It’s not “cherry-picking” to point out that most people rate their insurance highly, even if they also express concerns with the system. Yes, the health care system polls poorly in the abstract and many people complain about aspects of insurance, especially cost. But the topline is mostly positive. - ThreadSky

whstancil.bsky.social • 80 days ago

It’s not “cherry-picking” to point out that most people rate their insurance highly, even if they also express concerns with the system. Yes, the health care system polls poorly in the abstract and many people complain about aspects of insurance, especially cost. But the topline is mostly positive.

Reposted from arjun

Let this be a lesson in cherrypicking www.kff.org/private-insu...

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itsseth.com•80 days ago

What % of this sample have actually had to use their insurance to cover care outside of routine preventative and sick visits? That is, how many people have garbage insurance but don't realize it because they are young/healthy?

flowvoid.bsky.social•80 days ago

People who are unhealthy also tend to rate their insurance as good.

chargingtriceratops.com•80 days ago

Does that make a difference when they vote though?

1. People generally like their insurance
2. Their insurance is crap

Number 2 doesn't negate number 1 even if it should because they just don't know it yet.

whstancil.bsky.social•80 days ago

Probably a lot but it doesn’t matter politically

littlemunchkin.bsky.social•80 days ago

so you have no idea but also the answer is something that verifies the conclusion you were looking for in the first place. wow no wonder everyone considers you such a really smart stats guy

chargingtriceratops.com•80 days ago

It doesn't matter though, if most people generally like their insurance (evn if the reality is that their insurance sucks) - then they'll hesitate to vote for healthcare reform (see the pushback on ACA).

littlemunchkin.bsky.social•80 days ago

If that was true then explain all the support for Luigi. You can personally like your insurance but still understand that it's a broken system as a whole.

bendoubles.bsky.social•80 days ago

Because there’s a difference between a nebulous dislike for the system and the somewhat more concrete opinion on your own insurance. Luigi was getting revenge on the system without any obvious impact to your own personal insurance. Reform will impact your own insurance and it gets judged on that

littlemunchkin.bsky.social•80 days ago

Also you're missing my point which is that big brain numbers guy is just making things up to support the thing he wants the data to imply.

snarkranger.bsky.social•80 days ago

You can think it's a broken system without supporting the changes that are needed to fix it (namely, a public insurer, higher taxes, and cost controls on providers such as doctors and pharmaceutical companies).

chargingtriceratops.com•80 days ago

That seems to be Stancil's point, that in order to enact change, you need to have the buy-in of the majority who like their policy and don't want to see it change -- even if they 'like' their policy because they haven't had to seriously use it.

jlindy.bsky.social•80 days ago

People vote based on incorrect beliefs all the time, unfortunately.

jortscity.bsky.social•80 days ago

People also like it when their home values are high before they sell, but hate it when they're wanting to buy.

kenschutte.bsky.social•80 days ago

I think the problem is with outliers. Most people don’t have problems with thier health insurance because they don’t interact with it much or just have routine care.
But if you’re unlucky, it can ruin your life or the life of a loved one. It’s not hard to find horror stories.

poptart2nd.bsky.social•80 days ago

Look at the polling for people who need to use their insurance and it dramatically changes.

jwolf.bsky.social•80 days ago

What's your plan to ensure only those people vote?

poptart2nd.bsky.social•80 days ago

Enthusiasm gap

whstancil.bsky.social•80 days ago

In addition to the other points being made, it doesn’t change that dramatically. Satisfaction declines, it doesn’t turn negative

cyanescens.bsky.social•80 days ago

If in most years only a small % of people have to use their insurance for more than the basic stuff that gets covered no problem, it doesn’t matter politically.

You can’t win an election by appealing only to people with serious health issues or terminal illnesses.

kevinlikesmaps.bsky.social•80 days ago

Also, it changes. I was very unhappy with my insurance in 2017 specifically but before and after that it was fine, I guess? I can understand that M4A would be a societal good but for me personally it wouldn't have made much of a difference in voting. And not now either.

dianemn.bsky.social•80 days ago

I’m trying to figure out what your point is here. That the system doesn’t need fixing? Most ppl aren’t heavy users of the system. It seems great - until you need it. If that survey had crosstabs showing ratings based on how much ppl used their insurance, you’d probably see a very different picture.

snarkranger.bsky.social•80 days ago

The point is that you have to convince the people who like their current health care that your alternative is sufficiently better to overcome their fear of change.

snarkranger.bsky.social•80 days ago

"We'll get the votes of people who use their insurance a lot" is insufficient to win national elections.

edivimo.bsky.social•80 days ago

"Rating their insurance highly"
If someone is hanging from a precipice, they will also rate their rope highly.
They'll prefer to be pulled-out to a safer place, that's why they have "concerns with the system".
They know, "in the abstract" cutting their ropes is bad, but no concrete proof of that.

edivimo.bsky.social•80 days ago

Some crazy people have proposed that everybody should pool together to buy everybody a rope and then be replaced by a net, but the guy selling the ropes swears that his ropes are better and no better ropes are possible.
And he is encouraged to cut the ropes he sells, because that's more profitable.

encomium.bsky.social•80 days ago

“If you like your plan, you can keep it.”

mrbrooksher.bsky.social•80 days ago

I mean, exactly. That turned out not to be true for everyone, and the Dems got raked over the coals over it.

encomium.bsky.social•80 days ago

Right, the thing about insurance is that it works well for a lot of people in spite of the horror stories for others.

gerikatz.bsky.social•80 days ago

Because a majority of people aren’t sick all at the same time.

skepitcaldoc.bsky.social•80 days ago

the funny thing is people are really only mad at insurance companies but the cost is driven by doctors, hospitals, and Pharma. Insurance companies try to keep costs down and really are on the patient's side. Who else keeps costs down? Doctors would like to charge as much as possible! (I'm a doctor).

green496.bsky.social•80 days ago

It may very well be the case that a majority of people think health insurance is fine, but if the tail of the case are people with chronic conditions getting screwed both medically and financially, that’s tens of millions of people who are having a *really* bad time.

bottyguy.bsky.social•80 days ago

I suspect that "most" people don't have horrible interactions with their insurance payment processes because the majority of people are younger (at least <65) don't use their insurance to the limits.

bottyguy.bsky.social•80 days ago

The yearly physical gets paid without intervention, a broken bone, fine. Some PT, ok needed to get it approved, but hey I got on the schedule. My insurance is fine.

My son needs monthly Humira injections. My insurance is a nightmare.

mrbrooksher.bsky.social•80 days ago

The problem is, my son gets one Humira injection a week, and our insurance has been pretty good about it, so instead of wanting to improve things across the board I'm incentivized to protect what I have.

mrbrooksher.bsky.social•80 days ago

The presidential election pretty clearly indicates that a majority of Americans are ok with stepping on the less fortunate if they think they'll benefit from doing so. Overhauling the health care system will require sacrifices Americans aren't willing to make.

admiral-monke.bsky.social•80 days ago

The electorate litterally punished Democrats brutally for prioritizing employment ober inflation. High unemployment, of course, is something that hurts the poor the most (a few middle-class people end up underemployed, but legions of the poor have no work at all)

pteridoid.bsky.social•80 days ago

I'm tempted to keep arguing that health care reform is an issue voters will care about. Just throw them a bone and say you'll do something, and I think people will respond.

But then again, Trump won on "I have concepts of a plan" so what the hell do I know about anything?

coconnor8.bsky.social•80 days ago

People love Tornado Guard

https://xkcd.com/937/

whstancil.bsky.social•80 days ago

What’s happening here is that a lot of you have an answer you WISH people gave - that they hate their insurance - and when they failed to give it, you went rooting around in other surveys to try to find numbers that help you ignore the inconvenient result. But this is how we get ourselves in trouble

striderhlc.bsky.social•80 days ago

A lot of people don’t personally have issues with their health insurance but everyone knows someone who has a horror story about dealing with their insurance company. I think that’s what you’re missing here.

snarkranger.bsky.social•80 days ago

But that doesn't mean they're willing to elect candidates who want to completely overhaul the health care system.

snarkranger.bsky.social•80 days ago

Like, yeah, they've heard horror stories. They're still not voting for candidates who would implement positive reforms. They're electing candidates who want to roll back the ACA - the most meaningful health care reform legislation of my 41-year lifetime.

striderhlc.bsky.social•80 days ago

I'd say they're voting for the guy who goes up on stage at rallies and says "I'm gonna fix everything about healthcare very quickly" as opposed to the guys who go up on stage and say "we're gonna reduce costs by 2% by a bunch of incomprehensible technocratic tweaks if you deliver a supermajority"

striderhlc.bsky.social•80 days ago

The problem with the latter is that it makes you look feckless and weak!

whstancil.bsky.social•80 days ago

The core issue here is exactly what’s captured in the polls: there is a lot of vague anger towards “the system” that could be read as a mandate for reform, and certainly people would like to pay less, but they actually like their insurance, and have tended to feel when you change it

ritterteufeltod.bsky.social•80 days ago

If hating health insurers as an abstract class were sufficient to drive reform Bill Clinton would have passed health care reform when I was 8.

Also like, this whole murder insurers thing is the plot of bestselling novel and major motion picture The Rainmaker. It didn’t start the revolution either.

whstancil.bsky.social•80 days ago

The entire direction of health care reform in the US has been shaped by this fact. That’s why each successive effort at reform, from Truman onwards, has reduced the amount of disruption to insurance status quo: not because Dems are captured by capital but because voters keep pushing back.

peterleoia.bsky.social•80 days ago

Does that mean the best strategy for messaging further reform is to say over and over again “you won’t even notice a difference”? That feels like what Rs would do. As vague and unpersuasive as you or I might find it, that kind of oversimplification seems to work for them.

cheyinka.bsky.social•80 days ago

My primary care doctor at the time had a sign in every single exam room asking us to call our senators to stop the ACA. Who would *you* trust, if you were coming at this completely cold - some politician, or the guy who does your yearly physical and prescribes your statins?

cheyinka.bsky.social•80 days ago

I mean, I was then one of those Democrats reassured by the promise that the ACA didn't mean the government would ever be paying for abortions, and I was predisposed to think that the ACA would be an improvement, so I just rolled my eyes at the signs, but...

memberguest.bsky.social•80 days ago

That was the point of Obama saying if you like your plan you can keep it and it still got a backlash because the junk plans they got rid of still had some people who liked them

peterleoia.bsky.social•80 days ago

I remember. But Obama and his allies gave up on that message instead of simply ignoring the complaints of the people you describe, who are such a small number of people they couldn’t cause the kind of overall opposition to the ACA on their own over that niche issue.

figgityfigs.bsky.social•80 days ago

That was the whole pitch for the ACA! “If you like your plan you can keep your plan” was that! And it’s what they got attacked on later when some plans got canceled!

karlsoap.bsky.social•80 days ago

I suppose they could have pointed out that insurance will pull the rug out at any opportunity and the ACA should reduce that but they were negotiating with the companies and probably didn't want to demonize them too much.

peterleoia.bsky.social•80 days ago

Oh, I remember. Two things though. First, Obama and his allies gave up on that message. And second, when “you won’t notice a difference” is far more vague than “if you like your plan you can keep it”—that’s a pretty specific promise.

whstancil.bsky.social•80 days ago

Now it would be nice, as a reformer, if we could do what the left is currently doing, and say “That’s not TRUE, no one actually believes THAT” - but we’ve found time and time again that the polling here does pretty much reflect public sentiment towards their own health care

izosozi.xyz•80 days ago

I understand your point, but the measure of the quality of a healthcare system isn't its popularity, it's how many vulnerable people are left behind and neglected by it. By objective metrics, the US health system is higher cost and lower quality than any comparable economy, especially for the poor.

izosozi.xyz•80 days ago

The purpose of a social safety net and the promotion of human rights (like health care) is to protect the minority. A well-fed majority should not be a counterpoint to efforts to feed a starving minority.

izosozi.xyz•80 days ago

The popularity statistic is at least a red herring, if not cherrypicking

kabulykos.bsky.social•80 days ago

Might people be seeing the GOP invention of "the economy is bad yet the economy is great *for me*" and assuming they can make hay of its healthcare analogue.

Maybe if even a plurality of people had an opportunity to observe healthcare inflation directly...

jodyshenn.bsky.social•80 days ago

Again, I think disconnect may be coming from here, it’s asking about *current* insurance and a fifth of folks have had less than year. They might’ve hated their last plan, that skews the figure

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