Current Events > that dastardly DCCC is pushing Democrats to oppose single-payer health care

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://theintercept.com/2018/02/27/dccc-internal-polling-congress-single-payer/

In the wake of the election, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which works to elect House Democrats, commissioned a survey and analysis from Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and GBA Strategies to help think through health care messaging.

In April, the firms veteran pollster Stan Greenberg briefed House Democrats on the findings with a presentation at the offices of the Democratic National Committee.

The messaging handouts, obtained by The Intercept, made clear where the party wants its candidates to stand when it comes to health care reform preferably nowhere, but certainly not with single payer advocates.

The polling memorandum, produced by GBA Strategies and Greenbergs firm, was composed by surveying 52 so-called battleground districts, half currently held by Democrats and half held by Republicans.

The question that Greenberg put before Democrats to make the case against single payer, though, is a highly unusual one, emphasis in the original: If you could change one thing about your healthcare or health insurance, what would it be?...

The polling did not frame singly payer negatively. The poll did not use the word socialized at any point. I think what you might be referring to is the chart on p3, which represents the answers to an open-ended question that asked If you could change one thing about your healthcare or health insurance, what would it be? As you can see, the dominant response (44%) was to reduce the cost of health care or prescription drugs, he wrote in an email. 12% responded make it single-payer, make it universal, make it socialized, make it more like Canada or something to that effect. When we do an open-ended question, we often group the responses into like categories, so that we can quantify the results.

The memo then suggests a course of action for House Democrats based on the polling supporting tax breaks to reduce the cost of health care and allowing Medicare to negotiate for drug prices (which Democrats barred in 2009 in order to win Big Pharmas support for the ACA):

I have been to these kind of things before and helped write and distribute those talking points papers. Never at the level of congress of course. And I will say that it is super frustrating the amount of pushback you get when you attempt to have a proactive message. That drug price negotiation thing is basically the only idea I have heard that isn't reactive in the past year at least with respect to people in meaningful positions of power as opposed to activists
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also it is very weird that they provided lines of attack but supposedly no rejoinders. I have enver seen that before.

also bump
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Republicans are playing that long-term scum game too well, Democrats are all "hold mah beer" all over the place.
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