Why are Americans so stubbornly resistant to government health care?
Gerald F. Seib examines America's psyche in his latest WSJ article. His diagnosis: Americans are not happy with their health care, but are afraid of change.
Seib examines the reasons why.
This seems counterintuitive. People know the system is creaking, frustrating and way too expensive. They complain about it all the time. Yet they can't quite let it go.
Here in the real world, people put up every day with creaking, frustrating and way too expensive things: cars, houses, spouses... You take what you can get, remembering that the grass ain't always greener on the other side of the fence, no matter what some DC huckster tells you.
Maybe it's the Marcus Welby factor!
Americans maintain a gauzy, almost dreamy image of doctors and nurses. The image of the preternaturally soothing hometown doctor portrayed on television's "Marcus Welby, M.D." is the ideal to which Americans cling.
Earth to Gerald! Marcus Welby went off the air in 1976. A good chunk of the population wasn't even born then. Even I barely remember the show, associating Robert Young more with the Folgers commercials, and I can't recall the last time I heard someone wax poetic about her doctor.
He goes on to mention how we've become accustomed to health insurance being provided by the employer ever since it became an unintended consequence of government-mandated WW II wage and price controls. That should at least have given his propaganda march pause, but he kept on going, right past the Rube Goldberg factor.
DC's Rube Goldberg Institute
Yes! Americans are afraid of Government Rube Goldberg contraptions. Just like the Coyote when he gets some contraption in the mail from the Acme company. He thinks he'll catch the roadrunner this time, but ends up blowing himself up. Government works alot like that, so you'll excuse us for being skeptical.
We don't trust government to do this right. Seib calls it the Post Office factor:
Americans are deeply cynical about government's ability to do anything right. Putting a man on the moon, building an interstate-highway system, fielding history's most lethal army -- nothing has changed that.
First of all, the US government has nothing to do with the Army's success. That comes down to the blood, guts, brains and determination of the American fighting men and women who overcome all obstacles, usually in spite of bureaucrats and politicians. I hate big government people throwing this out because it's BS.
Man on the moon and interstate highway system? I'd be more reassured if Mr. Seib could produce an example that wasn't 40 years old. The space program's heyday was the 1960's, and by the way, powered by teams of military men and scientists unencumbered by today's bureaucratic snarls of red tape.
We don't trust that our government will do anything right because it hasn't done anything right in a very long time. A smirking liberal may chime in, "But you'll trust a greedy insurance company!" Yes, yes I will. Good companies with good reputations want to make money, and they can't do that if they screw all their customers in a marketplace where there is open competition.
Finally he concludes:
In short, lousy as the system may be, lots of people have a direct economic stake in it. Any wonder they don't like the idea of a leap into the unknown?
We just took one of those leaps into the unknown last November. Many are now wishing they had a bungee cord.
WSJ - Seib
