Here’s what I take away from the latest NYT/CBS poll on health care: people are quite capable of holding two completely opposing beliefs simultaneously. To wit:
In one finding, 75 percent of respondents said they were concerned that the cost of their own health care would eventually go up if the government did not create a system of providing health care for all Americans. But in another finding, 77 percent said they were concerned that the cost of health care would go up if the government did create such a system.
As a whole, Americans are deeply ambivalent of government’s ability to implement any kind of complicated social program. That’s what thirty years of conservative ideologues bashing government will get you. But once those programs are up and running, they tend to be pretty popular. Nobody talks seriously about eliminating Medicare or Social Security anymore because it would be political suicide. But we have a high tolerance for putting up with intolerable situations. As intolerable as our current health care system is, it is familiar. It’s like that beater car you once had; the one that leaked oil and pulled to the right and always needed a jump when the temperature dipped below freezing. It got you from place to place, but just barely.
If Congress can pass a decent reform bill, it could go a long way towards restoring our faith in good government. I’m just worried that decades of declining expectations for civil institutions of any kind have left us incapable of imagining something better for ourselves.
