Despite Barack Obama’s recent surge in the polls, much could change between now and election day. While it looks like this election will be decided by the economy, unexpected events could dramatically change the campaign narrative. Terrorists could conduct an attack inside the US. Obama, despite his two years of steady poise, could say something really stupid between now and November, that would cause independent voters to flee.
But one thing is certain: this presidential campaign, like all recent campaigns, will not be decided by the candidates’ health care proposals.
The US health care system is a bigger threat to the American population than terrorism ever was. As horrific and evil as were the attacks on 9/11, and as much as we needed to mobilize our troops to depose the Taliban from Afghanistan, the more than 3000 people who died on 9/11 are dwarfed in numbers by the tens of thousands of people who die, needlessly, because they have no health insurance.
Ask people what they are worried about, and health care usually sits near the top of their list. Almost 50 million people in the US have no health insurance, people who have to decide whether that gash really requires stitches, or whether that heartburn is a mere stomach problem or sign, instead, of a potentially fatal heart attack. A similarly vast number of people have too little health insurance to cover the basic health needs. Consequently, they hover in economic peril, one serious illness away from bankruptcy.
To make matters worse, persistently rising health care costs threaten our global competitiveness, handcuffing US industries with huge expenses. This health care inflation also adds to state and federal budget problems.
Yet despite this dire situation, health care doesn’t win elections, because health care problems never feel as immediate as other threats. When the Dow Jones plummets 800 points, people understandably worry. They can see their life’s savings dwindling, and their hopes of early retirement evaporating. When a student conducts a school massacre, everyone is caught up in the terrible drama, with their view of gun control quickly rising up their list of concerns: gun control advocates will feel even more passionately than before the massacre that we need to restrict gun ownership, while gun control opponents will become even more convinced that the whole situation could have been averted if more of the teachers were packing.
There is no aspect of the health care crisis that has the immediacy of a bank foreclosure, a terrorist attack, or even a verbal gaffe from one of the candidates. Our health care crisis fails to win elections in part because it doesn’t feel like a crisis to enough people. It also fails because it is hard for candidates to come up with a simple solution to such a complicated mess, and therefore any solution a candidate puts forth is easily caricaturized and criticized.
Both candidates have proposed ways they think will improve our health care system. I feel strongly that Obama’s approach, even in its preliminary form, is far superior to McCain’s. But that probably won’t matter on election day. Ultimately this campaign will be won over other issues.
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