Over at the TPM Cafe, Greg Anrig Jr. posts the runner up for today’s “The Dumbest Thing I’ve Read All Day” post.
He argues that the best thing to help the “genuine economic problems confronting average American families” is to legislate in nationwide Universal Healthcare Coverage.
To back up his argument, he points to a survey (pdf file) by the Commonweath Fund presented last month that asked some very poorly phrased questions about healthcare of 1023 people from across the country. The survey oversamples Democrats and found some of the lowest money earning college grads I’ve ever seen.
The survey comes to the conclusion that 76% of people want drastic changes in the healthcare system in the US.
So, to Anrig, this means that the time is ripe to start pushing Socialized Medicine.
The survey, of course, mentions nothing about the costs to the average citizen for this type of coverage, and surprise, surprise, neither does Anrig in his post.
I have a strong suspicion that if the survey were to ask people if they would be willing to drop another 12% to 17% of their raw income on health insurance whether they will be using it or not, their opinions might be more than just a little different.
Especially when you remind them that 55%, if not more, of their income is already going to cover local, state and federal taxes.
But telling someone that paying 70% of their income to some type of government bureaucracy run like the DMV will help their economic plight is kind of a hard sell, so people like Anrig and folks like the Commonwealth Fund miraculously neglect to mention it.
I guess they are thinking at least part of this out. But only so they can deceive.