The Dark side of "Medicare for All"

The Washington Post headlined nonvoters elected Trump.  

It's the turnout, stupid.

There is a simple solution, right? Have a message that excites current nonvoters, like "Medicare For All."

Watch out. The message motivates the old white folks who do vote. They lose their special status.

The Pew Trust sponsored a careful examination of who voted and who didn't. The Washington Post reported on it: Click: Washington Post   Here is the link to the whole survey Click: Pew Survey

Their data confirm what we probably guessed all along. The people who turn out to vote skews old, white, educated, and not being in poverty.

Old people (like me) and white people punch above their weight. In 2016 voting, 27% of the voters who actually voted were over age 65 and 74% of the people who actually voted were white. Hillary's coalition of the oppressed ethnicities--black and Latinos--didn't turn out as well. 

Seniors vote.

The Pew data buttresses an idea that is going around within Democratic thinking: get a clearer message, one that gives black, brown, and working class white men a reason to vote Democratic. One of those ideas is "Medicare For All." It is income re-distribution, and it is a tangible benefit for the young, the working poor, the struggling middle class, and it addresses the growing "gig economy."

Sounds good, right? 

It is just what this blog has suggested in message simplicity and clarity. It just expands a familiar and popular program. The idea can be uttered in three words. 

So what's the problem? As we saw, old people vote.

"Medicare For All" takes something from seniors. People with Medicare have the equivalent of "elite status" on an airline. They have something special and there is nothing "special" if it is shared with everyone. Medicare recipients understand that they earned this special status by paying for it and by getting old.

Trump understands voter psychology of a zero sum world of winners and losers, and the resentment people feel about loss. It is a general Trump theme. If they win, you lose.

Trump implies there are only so many jobs, and immigrants take them away. In the zero sum mindset, America is a crowded lifeboat and immigrants are swamping the boat. American citizenship is special, and immigration devalues it, in that zero sum mindset. "Medicare For All" is another iteration of this idea.

People hate to lose things. Loss is experienced more vividly than gain. (I have 30 years experience as a financial advisor. I know this. People like gain, but they hate loss more. In my experience, about five times as much.)

Bottom line: For many seniors, Medicare For All does not feel like "fairness."  It feels like loss. Imagine yourself to be a United Airlines Gold Status traveler, who gets priority boarding and free luggage and the Exit Row, and the occasional free upgrade to Business, earned by having travelled for 100,000 miles. You now learn that, due to agitation by bargain travelers or maybe the courts, United Airlines announces that in the interest of fairness and equality, and a philosophy of giving special affirmative advantage to the less privileged, everyone gets priority everything. The airline doesn't say they are canceling Gold Status. They just now say everyone gets it, so now everyone boards at the same time, and everyone gets equal shot at the upgrades, and free baggage is now included in the higher ticket cost..

How would you feel?

Resentful, maybe? Cheated?  And maybe open to the idea that United Airlines should be "great again", and give the people who earned special status their special status back? After all, we played by the rules of the game, and now they want to cheapen the specialness by giving it to everyone.

Democrats need to understand and integrate this mindset into their messaging on "Medicare For All." Equal Medicare isn't fair and good, in the eyes of many seniors. It feels like a loss. Democratic policy and messaging can expand health care, but policy and message needs to communicate that seniors still get special something. Otherwise, the message will backfire politically.

Democrats would ignore this at their peril. After all, gain is less motivating than loss. Young people have something to gain and seniors have something to lose. And seniors vote. 


[A note on comments. This blog gets too many anonymous comments, including ones from Curt Ankerberg and others that are just nasty potshots and do not contribute to reasonable dialog.
I am going to moderate comments again. If you comment expect a couple hour delay in it being posted.  I urge two things: 1. sign your name. 2. if Curt Ankerberg or others want to make sharp witted troll comments, then get your own blog and do it there.]