Mitchell’s Musings 10-2-2017: What You Know Daniel J.B. Mitchell Sometimes what you assume to be true may not be. Mark Twain is supposed to have said that “It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble; it's what you know for sure that just ain't so.”1 But then again, just to illustrate the point, it appears that he never said it.2 Two items in the news recently come to mind. One is the political appeal of “single-payer” health insurance. There seems to be an assumption, at least on the part of some on the left, that this concept is a natural rallying cry for Democrats. Indeed, it seems on the way to be becoming a litmus test for Democrats. But how popular is the idea generally, i.e., among voters? The other item I spotted in the news – albeit very locally - is that we live in an era of unprecedented technical progress. The little city I inhabit – Santa Monica, California (population around 93,000) - feels a need to plan for this progress. Let’s start with the first item. How popular is single-payer, particularly among Democrats, but also among voters in general? Below is a poll from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) that asks those questions. Note that California is a “blue state,” so one might expect the notion to be particularly popular in a California poll. ===
Source: http://www.ppic.org/wp-content/uploads/s_917mbs.pdf. === It’s true that the poll above doesn’t really ask about “single-payer.” It asks about a “single national health insurance system run by the government.” And it is quite likely that because lots of folks don’t really know what single-payer is, the pollsters had to define it for them to obtain responses. Still, described the way the pollsters asked, only 44% of Californians who identify as Democrats favor the 1
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/m/marktwain109624.html. https://newrepublic.com/minutes/126677/it-aint-dont-know-gets-trouble-must-big-short-opens-fake-marktwain-quote. 2
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