The graph above illustrates a poll taken by the Kaiser Family Foundation of the opinions of Democrats on the effect of different labels applied to the same healthcare reform proposal which I sampled from this post at the Wall Street Journal.
As you can see Bernie Sanders is doing a pretty darned good job of selling his proposals just by the way he labels them.
I have contended all along that the PPACA reflected exactly what Senate Democrats wanted in 2009 and the graph gives you a hint on why that might have been the case. They were worried about their re-election chances if they enacted a single-payer system. What they did was the risk-averse solution.
Exactly? I doubt that. They dropped a number of things that would have helped because of GOP pressure. They dropped the part that would have allowed people to be advised about end of life issues because Palin et al called them death panels. Thanks to that people can continue to die with more pain and less dignity at the end of their lives, but at least some political points were scored. (Continuing sore spot. If you don’t have the beliefs that conservative religious voters have about suffering being good for you, it gets old watching what happens at the end of life.)
There are a number of other things like a stronger price control panel, the public option and some others they would have wanted. However, I do think it safe to say that very broadly they wanted to build upon the insurance system that was present at the time rather than do single payer or Medicare for all.
Steve
Only Republicans have agency? That’s absurd. What happened is that the Congressional Democratic leadership made political judgments on what should or should not be in the bill.