The Republicans’ Achilles Heel

Ruy Teixeira has an interesting observation:

Take a look at this graphic from the recent New York Times/Ipsos poll. Quick quiz: what is the intersection of the two sets “most important issues for themselves personally” and “most important issues for the Democratic Party”?

Here’s the table to which he draws attention:

He continues:

That right: it’s health care! There’s no other overlap between the two sets. Health care is the #2 issue for the public and at least makes the leaderboard—at #5—on what respondents think is most important to the Democratic Party. The Republican Party, on other hand, is viewed as sharing three of the public’s top five priorities—the economy, immigration, and taxes—but not health care.

You may see where I’m going with this. High salience issues on which Democrats have a clear advantage are thin on the ground these days—but health care definitely qualifies and has stood out as a robust Democratic advantage for quite some time.

The majority of Americans want the healthcare system to remain private but, paradoxically, believe that ensuring that people can obtain some form of healthcare insurance is the responsibility of the federal government. However, a whopping 72% of Democrats would prefer a single-payer healthcare system.

For my part I see no way of squaring that circle. How would a single-payer system be sustainable without controlling costs? Or how would the federal government ensure that people had access to healthcare insurance without controlling costs.

That’s the difference between the U. S. and the UK or, say, France. The French and Brits are willing to control healthcare costs. We aren’t.