Is Health Care Too Complicated For Democracy

From Economist:
"POP quiz, tell me what each of the following terms means: comparative effectiveness research; guaranteed issue; community rating; capitation. If you can correctly define them all then you're... probably lying...most Americans are confused about the health-care reforms being discussed in Congress. Only 31% of Americans think they understand what is being discussed, and I wonder how many of them could pass my little test. The debate over health-care reform has generated so much passion, based on so little knowledge.

Who's at fault? Certainly the media deserves some blame. Last weekend the ombudsman for the Washington Post...lamented his paper's focus on political maneuvering in the health-care debate. ...72% of the paper's health-care stories were on politics, process or protests. Much less space has been devoted to a substantive analysis of the actual reforms being mulled.

...Yet the media isn't the only entity deserving blame. A large majority (60%) of Americans think that Barack Obama hasn't clearly explained his plans for reform. A large majority of congressional Democrats might agree. And who knows what Max Baucus is cooking up? This has allowed those on the other side of the debate—folks like Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich and, most recently, Michael Steele—to willfully mislead the public for political gain.

In the end, though, even with perfect media coverage and perfect politicians, should we really expect a large majority of the public to understand the terms of the health-care debate? I can't think of the last time Americans were asked to consider something so complicated. How many Americans can adequately explain their own health-care coverage?...
http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2009/09/technocrats_needed.cfm


TW: The Economist blogger appears to be losing faith in our ability to govern ourselves. Folks have been doing so since well government started. Health care is complicated (I could not define all four of the those items either but thx to modern search engines I can brush up darn quick). As I say over and over, we get the governance we deserve. Demagoguery oriented to simplistic, populist and easy opposition will always be present (from both sides but opposing sides more than others and certain opposition the most). This lamentation from more serious conservatives is a bit ironic given the demagogic way of their political leaders but speaks to the challenge of raising the debate.

From NYT:
"...many leading conservative health care policy experts said in recent interviews that the ["town hall/death panel"] dynamic was precluding a more robust real-world debate while making it nearly impossible for them to inject their studied, free-market solutions into the discussions.

And they said the focus on what they consider misleading or secondary issues was getting in the way of real questions about the plan they believed worthy of consideration."

TW: Yet I remain optimistic. The "town hall" approach appears to be losing some steam. The next few weeks will be crucial and painful especially as some dreams on the left are squashed in order to get an actual bill done. But a bill will get done.