The Language Of The Heath Care Reform Debate

Nate Silver takes a look at the actual word responses that people used in the latest Gallup poll on health care debate.  This latest poll finds 45% would tell their Representative in the House to vote for the current plan, and 48% would tell their Representative to vote against it.  That's about what it has been for the last several months, give or take a few points.

The real story here is what words people use in responding to the poll.  On the pro side, this is a picture of what words people user the most in responding to Gallup pollsters, the larger the word, the larger share of it being used in a response (graphics here from FiveThirtyEight.com)



The con side is just as interesting:



A couple of observations from the above graphics.  Both sides talk about "insurance" and "need" , both sides agree on that, but the pro side is definitely based around the moral argument for.  The words are there: people, need, afford, everyone, better, now, help.

The con side is equally focused on the economic arguments against.  Those words are there too: Government, cost (and costs), pay (and paying), money, work, economy.

The words "public" and "option" are virtually nowhere in the pro side, and abortion is a pretty small word in the con side.  This truly tells you what the heart of the matter is for each side, and what is the semantics.  The pro side wants to improve people's lives.  The con side argues that government will make health care far worse at our expense.

This brings me to a couple of points:  First, if Bush had left us a better economic situation, and a situation where government itself wasn't so reviled and distrusted, a lot of the argument on the con side I think would be muted.  There would be solid support for this bill.  Ironically the bulk of the argument against health care reform is that Obama's government is just as incompetent as Bush's was, or worse.  Bush nearly wrecking the country actually made it harder for Obama to push this plan, and Bush did such a thorough job of it, it's driven this thing down to the wire.  It has even overcome Medicare, Medicaid, veteran's care and the fact all of those already account for a health chunk of our health care in this country.  It's already government-run, and yet the con side ignores that fact.

Second, Obama was right to go after the numbers on this as much as possible, but he's really failed to show how well government health care can work.  Unfortunately, going back to the Walter Reed hospital scandal, Bush again showed America that the potential for abuse and neglect really is there.  That's now being thrown in Obama's face, fair or not.

People good, government bad.  Everything seems to boil down to this these days.