Why do the DEMS on tv keep calling health insurance an entitlement?

[jodymarie aimee]

Zerlina Maxwell on Rev Al now, and again refers to it....you can't take away an entitlement....THIS IS A HOT BUTTON WORD FOR THE REPUBLICANS.....stop it, please. Next they will call it abortion insurance....These are OUR guys. They should know better.

[burnbaby]

1. I think they

Call it an entitlement in order to save the aca. You can't take entitlements away without a backlash

[loyalsister]

24. That and republicans use entitlement to describe social security

and anything that helps poor people in order to paint poor people as having a sense of entitlement. Expanding the use of that concept to working class, middle class, etc in the US diminishes the power of that word to demonize government administered and funded programs that also help people.

[sharedvalues]

29. Yes. Rich kids Don Jr and Ivanka and Jared are entitled.

Average Americans have a social safety net. Which is a benefit we all pay taxes for to help ourselves and those less fortunate.

[loyalsister]

39. or

Convince middle class people they are entitled and maybe they'll stop hating poor people.

[jberryhill]

2. Oh my, we mustn't trigger the Republicans

You know what else are "hot button words" for Republicans? Equality, Justice, and Liberty

[Shandris]

14. You know, I've always been very non-confrontational about word choice and trying to...

...take a high ground and all that, but I think I'm coming around to this way of thinking. EVERYTHING triggers them (while they complain about being triggered). It's ridiculous. And I've had quite enough of it.

Don't think I'd call INSURANCE an entitlement though, think I'd call HEALTHCARE an entitlement. Let the Republicans worry about how to come out and say 'No, no one is entitled to live just because we know how to make it happen'.

[sharedvalues]

3. SOCIAL SAFETY NET!!!!!

Why Dems use the E word is beyond me. It's a dumb word that doesn't even accurately describe those social safety net programs.

[pnwmom]

18. What is wrong with the word? We ARE entitled to these government programs. n/t

[sharedvalues]

19. Luntz focus-grouped the e word

It evokes anti-societal, anti-poor feelings. That's why the GOP uses it.

I am making no judgement about its meaning. I am merely saying that we know using the word helps the GOP. "Social Safety Net" communicates the true purpose and communicates progressive values.

[pnwmom]

23. They would do that to ANY word that we picked. Originally, there was "charity."

They ruined that word, so we switched to entitlement -- as in, we were entitled to it because we paid for it -- it was not charity.

Then they ruined that word. They will ruin ANY word that we use for the programs of the social safety net.

[sharedvalues]

25. Here's a good read, why 'social safety net' is better.

I don't disagree that the right puts a lot of effort into PR and propaganda to ruin words (Masha Gessen's recent articles on language and Putin are particularly good.)

However, the "E word" is particularly good for billionaires and bad for average Americans.

http://www.lettingthedataspeak.com/entitlement-the-word-2/

Manipulated words that try to force you to think along certain lines are particularly insidious. `Entitlement’ has become one of those. It was this that George Orwell meant by newspeak, language “designed to diminish the range of thought” (“1984”), words and language that invert customary meanings, channel your thoughts.

Consider this statement from a Koch brothers’ funded website:

Unchecked growth of the massive entitlement programs threatens to bankrupt the U.S. Government in the next few years. This could cripple our economy. Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security – the three biggest federal programs – are on “auto-pilot” and growing faster than the economy.[vi]

`Entitlements’ as redefined makes it easy to group these three programs together, along with words like massive, cripple and bankrupt. Why is this misleading? Social Security is not in dire circumstances and so shouldn’t be tied in with the two health care programs. The cost increases in Medicare and Medicaid are because of increasing costs of health care generally and are not specific to those programs. Health care cost-growth is considered a problem. Fix that and the Medicare/Medicaid increases are fixed. On the other hand, if the real purpose is to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits, then linking them together as `entitlements’ along with flavor words warning of doom may be a way to persuade. But it doesn’t convey a true impression.

[sharedvalues]

26. p.s. keep up the good work pnwmom

I like your posts

[pnwmom]

28. Thanks, sharedvalues. You made some good points, too!

I do acknowledge that that word has been ruined. I just don't have confidence that they won't manage to smear any word we use.

[marylandblue]

4. It's the right word, you are entitled

You are entitled to healthcare and a dignfied old age. Don't let anyone say you are not.

[sharedvalues]

27. It's earned. You worked for it. It is compensation.

Billionaire rich kid children, like Ivanka and Jared, are entitled.

We worked for Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security. We pay into those programs, either for future benefits or for insurance - to cover us if we happen to get sick.
Those are earned benefits. They are the social safety net.

[pnwmom]

30. But that's what "entitled" means -- that you deserve it, not that it's just handed to you. n/t

[sharedvalues]

32. Yes. Those are great programs that help people.

The best word the Koches can find to pervert the good SS and Medicare do is the 'e word'. It has a semi-pejorative meaning ("entitled&quot .

But other words better reflect progressive values with no alternative pejorative connotation. "Social safety net". "Earned benefit".

The Koches use the 'e word' to imply a handout. But really these programs are insurance - we all pay into them so the programs can help us when we need them.

[pnwmom]

37. But these are people who are convinced that no one should have a safety net.

They really do believe in the survival of the fittest and have convinced themselves that they and their spawn are the fittest.

[Eliot Rosewater]

33. True, but the deplorables are too dumb to get that. And, they want the entitlements

just as we do, they just dont want trans, gay, black, latino, muslim, jewish, etc. to get get them.

[sharedvalues]

38. "Social safety net". No e-word :)

[stopbush]

5. Why use words like liberal and progressive when talking about Ds?

not to mention the word Democrat!

These are hot button words for Rs. We should start identifying ourselves as "them."

[Eliot Rosewater]

34. Great point, I am not a progressive, at all , but I am a liberal, but right now given the

circumstances, I am a DEMOCRAT.

There was a time in the past when I would not want to be known only as that, but now it is necessary.

[Towlie]

6. Why do you call Democrats "DEMS" but call Republicans by their proper name?

To me, the word "Dem" carries a mildly pejorative tone, and more often than not you see it in something a right-winger wrote.

[jodymarie aimee]

11. We have called ourselves DEMs for decades

over here, it is a marvelous word...... or abbreviation.

[tblue37]

12. I use "Dems" because it is short and easier to type on a mobile keyboard.

It is harder to sensibly abbreviate "Republican." Sometimes I use "GOP" but that requires capitalizing all letters--i. e., another awkward keystroke, and my autocorrect keep changing it to "TOP."

[MiniMe]

7. I agree, I pay a lot of money for my insurance

$1,100/month. And I hate to think of how expensive it would be without the ACA. I'm old enough to really need insurance, but not old enough for Medicare yet. I'm hoping Medicare will still be around in 5 years.

[marybourg]

8. Why do YOU believe "entitlement" is a pejorative?

[GulfCoast66]

9. Well said

We need to make the republicans tell the American people that Health Care is not a right. Make them say it over and over.

The American people now see it as a right

[jodymarie aimee]

10. Not to us, to the Rs

they bastardize words and give them entirely different meanings...In Wisconsin union and teacher are dirty words, whereas right to work and pro life are good words. You know how they fuck with FREEDOM, free to be poor, uneducated, homeless, without insurance.

That was the point...hot button words the Rs jump on.

[marybourg]

13. So we should be cowed

into changing our perfectly appropriate usage of language (again)? Uhh uhh. We've reclaimed
" liberal " and will not be pushed around by their language nazis any more. Entitlement is exactly the right word for things we are entitled to. The real bone of contention is that they don't think we're entitled to anything.

[Eliot Rosewater]

35. No, but we have to acknowledge the intellectual level of who we are dealing with

along with the decades of brainwashing they have undergone.

Death tax, etc.

They believe lies, pretty much every single thing they believe is a lie, so we have to figure out how to say these things.

There is no good answer when you are dealing with deplorables.

[Ron Obvious]

15. It reeks of "sense of entitlement"

It just has a negative connotation these days. It conjures up the idea of wanting something for free, unearned.

I'm sure these things are all thoroughly studied and focus-grouped, like "Democrat Party" to give something a negative connotation. The Democrats are generally naive when it comes to branding and naming, much more so than the Republicans.

[marylandblue]

16. It's the negative marketing, not the words we choose

Whatever word we choose, they will turn it into a negative. They did with the word liberal, so some switched to progressive, and they did the same to that word too. "Queer" used to be a perjorative, but when people started to use it on themsleves, it lost its negative power. So don't run from the label, own it!

[sharedvalues]

31. See the article above. See how Koches use the e word

It's far better for us to use "social safety net". Billionaires hate that.

Good explanation:
http://www.lettingthedataspeak.com/entitlement-the-word-2/

[Dreamer Tatum]

17. to distinguish it from a right, which it is not

If you have to get it from someone else, it is not a right. If someone else provides it to you by law, it's an entitlement.

[Demsrule86]

22. I believe healthcare is a right...and now thanks to the ACA...more folks feel that way.

Thanks Obama!

[Eliot Rosewater]

36. It is a right if you live in a society where decency is the order of the day.

[Dreamer Tatum]

40. If it's a right, then you should heal and treat yourself.

Can you do that? Or do you go get healthcare from someone else?

It's an entitlement.

[Autumn]

20. Healthcare should be an entitlement. You buy insurance through a private entity

not the government. Insurance is not an entitlement. Was she talking about insurance or the ACA?

[Demsrule86]

21. I have not trouble with that word...we are entitled to health care period.