I ran a focus group with Trump voters. Half said they support single-payer

[applegrove]

by Sarah Kliff at Vox

http://www.vox.com/2017/4/3/15167916/i-ran-a-focus-group-with-trump-voters-half-said-they-support-single-payer

"SNIP...........

One of my most surprising moments recently on the health care beat came late last month, when opinion researcher Michael Perry and I were running a focus group with Obamacare enrollees who voted for Trump.

We were in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, sitting in a sparse conference room at a big white table. Perry, who co-owns the research firm PerryUndem, asked the six-member group a question: Who likes Canada's health insurance system? Who wishes we had something like that?

Half of the hands shot up.

This surprised both of us! We hadn't planned to bring up single-payer health care; the focus group was about the Affordable Care Act. But one Trump voter had raised the idea that we'd be better off if we had a health care system like Canada's — where the government runs one health insurance plan for everyone — and wanted to see who agreed.

"There's a lot of countries that it works very successfully in," Michelle said of a Canadian-style single-payer system. (Focus group participants agreed to have their first names published.)

............SNIP"

[Warpy]

1. Some of them might be misogynists and xenophobes

but that doesn't mean they're stupid in all things.

Most people who know what it is want single payer. We're sick of bean counters who micromanage our health care to maximize profit.

[Lanius]

20. Good point. People can want a national healthcare system and still be racist, homophobic,

xenophobic pricks. Some of my relatives (who are rural Democrats) have always supported labor unions, social programs, etc., but are a little bit homophobic and a little bit sexist.

[bettyellen]

2. I believe that's why Sanders is defended them- they share a belief or two with him....

And somehow all the othe ugliness doesn't matter.

[YoungDemCA]

10. If only people who lacked ugly views voted Democratic, there would be no Democrats elected anywhere.

nt

[hopeforchange2008]

24. +1

[CTyankee]

3. I credit Obamacare for this. People got used to having affordable health care and LIKED

that experience. Now they are relooking at universal health care and getting real about it, not some political talking point about how awful the idea is.

Thanks, Obama. You opened the door. I miss you so much every day...

[Lanius]

21. If we manage to get a national health care program in our lifetime, we can look back and

thank Obama and the Democrats in the 111th U.S. Congress. Thirteen of those House Democrats who had the courage to vote for the ACA lost re-election in 2010.

Although I believe it needed to be passed, I wonder if the Democrats would be in control of Congress (or at least the Senate) today if they didn't vote for Obamacare?

[beam me up scottie]

4. This is more proof that it's possible to find common ground with them.

Not all Trump supporters are bigots - if we can convince 10-20% of his voters to support our candidate in 2018 we can win. There's nothing wrong with trying to attract them - in fact it's good strategy.

Or we can keep insisting they're all lost causes and see how that works.

[delisen]

8. Alltrump voters are lost causes? Who says that?

[beam me up scottie]

9. LOL. Are you really going to sea lion me?

A simple search will allow you to observe many such claims from various sources.

[delisen]

11. I think you should aim at more than 10-20% Trump voters. Clinton did.

[NewJeffCT]

17. If 10% of Trump voters voted for Democrats in 2018

Democrats would make huge gains in the elections.

Just 1% of Trump voters flipping to Clinton 6 months ago gives her the election in bigly fashion - Clinton picks up WI, PA, MI as well as Florida and NC. That 1% also likely means Toomey loses in PA if it flows down ballot

[JI7]

5. it doesn't matter as long as they vote on other issues

[mvd]

6. K&R

I said in another thread how it has had bipartisan appeal in polls.

[delisen]

7. Cousin voted Trump because the health care subsidies not high enough

I met with him after election. He was feeling uneasy about his vote. He receives disability and was genuinely concerned about family members and friends who just wanted the ACA to be more affordable.

His dad is elderly and watches television news. He was not prejudiced against Clinton.but told me how horrible it was that the Clinton Foundation paid for Chelsea's wedding dress.

He too was uneasy about his vote, and said that at least it looked like Trump was putting good people around him (this was before the full horror of his choices were known).

What this told me:

1. The ACA was a success in that after it was implemented people immediately gravitated to it, and just wanted it to be even more affordable. I think it works as a introduction to Universal one-payer for people.
The real opposition is from insurers and other interests

2. The propaganda machines of Russia and the Republican Party have to be crushed.

[nikibatts]

12. These voters want all the right things EXCEPT when it come to race and sex.

They value their prejudices more than their own lives.

[ck4829]

13. I'm sure Trump voters want universal healthcare, guaranteed employment, a robust safety net, etc.

As long as people darker than them, poorer than them, more liberal than them, and Muslim-ier than them are excluded in some way; whether that means there is some sort of loophole or they're not in the country anymore.

[NewJeffCT]

18. I think there is definitely a segment of Trump voters

that felt that no matter who won, they would be screwed over, but that Trump would make sure that black and brown people were screwed over more.

[Downtown Hound]

14. Which to me only proves that they're a bunch of idiots

Who fall for the dumbest and most transparent propaganda and vote against their own and the country's self interest time and again.

[Beartracks]

23. Well, to be fair, Trump lied to these people. A lot.

And they wanted to believe his bullshit, because he "wasn't Hillary."

And if they tend to be FOX-watchers, how would they ever have known any different?



======================

[Downtown Hound]

25. Trump's lies are so obvious and transparent

That only a blithering idiot would believe a word he says. So my statement stands.

[Beartracks]

28. But these people REALLY wanted to believe!!1!!

It's what made them such easy marks.

I wasn't intending to argue with your statement, by the way.

But I do kinda think that a lot of Trump voters could be like cult victims: de-educated and propagandized over many years.

===============

[Downtown Hound]

31. I realize that you weren't trying to argue with my statement

It's just that I've heard so many people try and make excuses for Trump voters, I'm just having none of it anymore. The bottom line is even if they claim to be not racist, they are racist, because they were willing to sacrifice others because they thought they would get something out of it.

But they're not just racist, they're stupid as fuck, and ignoring that and trying to pretend like they had legitimate reasons for supporting the most unqualified man ever to run for office is not helping anything. It's denying the problem and denying reality. So many liberals are trying to place all the blame on Clinton (she won by 3 million votes) or the Democratic Party (they won seats in congress) or this or that, few of them want to place the blame where it really belongs: on mostly white, ignorant, racist Republicans and a handful of moronic Independents. Not to mention Russian interference, Crosscheck, and a bullshit and archaic electoral college system.

Even the article to OP posted here is like, hey wait, Trump voters support the same things we do. Well, if that's true, tell them to stop being morons and voting for people who are the exact opposite of what they claim to believe in.

[DeminPennswoods]

15. Doesn't surprise me at all

I've had a lot of interactions with doctors and hospitals over the last 5-6 years with aging parents. The hoops the doctors and hospitals have to jump through for insurance purposes is just ridiculous. Our family doctors spent more time dealing with insurance companies than with my parents. Every time I brought up needing a single payer system to a healthcare professional or some other caregiver/relative of a patient, etc, I got an agreement in return.

[Grins]

30. Agree. And been there...

...with my sister who had cancer. ALWAYS an insurance company between her and her doctor(s).

British system is so different in that a doctor's office is filled with health pros (MD, RN's, LPN's etc.) with little to no staff having to do billing or records. They concentrate on patients and not paperwork. They even make house calls!

[HockeyMom]

16. Medicare (Part C) Advantage Plans

which would not eliminate private insurers from what I have heard. Personally, I would prefer to see private health insurance totally out of the picture. I have Original Medicare Only and do not want private health insurance as a supplement at all. Too much corruption for profits.

[Grins]

29. True...

And the British, French, German, etc. health systems all allow for private insurance and those companies make a profit. The key is that that don't do ALL medical, they just do the things that are incidental; i.e., private hospital rooms, special meals, massages. Little stuff for which the premiums are small.

[Yavin4]

19. If you limited Single Payer to White people only...Republicans would pass it in a minute. n/t

[7962]

22. They support it if you describe it, but not if you call it that

apparently that throws 'em!

[FakeNoose]

32. That was also true about "Obamacare"

Trump went around the country criticizing "Obamacare" and saying what a disaster it is, and how he's going to abolish it. The people in the audience all clapped and cheered because they didn't even realize that the ACA *is* Obamacare.

They were complete idiots - they voted for the man who is now happily screwing them.
Well he's trying to take away our healthcare, but we still have hope.

[Eliot Rosewater]

26. Who wants a system where you never have to worry about paying medical bills

ever again, a system where your everyday life stress is cut in half, permanently.

Who wants that!

[Grins]

27. "I actually like socialized medicine" (but) "it requires big tax increases to pay for it."

"I actually like socialized medicine," Sharon, another of the focus group participants, told us.

It's not "socialized medicine", it's socialized insurance. But I'll take what I can get if that is what the Trumpettes want to believe.

"The thing that makes single-payer so difficult is that it requires big tax increases to pay for it."

OK. Probably, yes; but maybe only for a start-up period. Those costs, I would think, should be offset by the premiums corporations and individuals are now forking over to for-profit insurance companies that would now go to Medicare. Vermont may have been too small a laboratory for this test.

[LiberalLovinLug]

33. I've said it for awhile now that Trump could be seen as an unlikely hero

And win handily in 2020, if he wasn't so pigheaded and stupid. All he has to do is go 180 and say he wants to work with any politician, whether Democrat, Republican or Independent to implement Single Payer. Because if SP has 50% Republican voter support now, I imagine it would be well over 50% if The Don makes a big pronouncement about how terrific and the best it would be.

But it would be stomach churning at the same time to watch a deplorable person like Trump being the father of universal healthcare for the country. And I'm sure if someone like Sanders agreed to work with him, Sanders would be hated even more by the D star wearing Sneetches who insist in hanging on to the "it can't be done...we don't have the votes, so we shouldn't even try" brilliance.