Jake Tapper of This Week interview David Axelrod about the healthcare bill.
This bill is important to the American people, Jake, and when you get underneath the numbers and you ask people, do you support giving people more leverage against insurance companies so that they — if they have preexisting conditions, they can get coverage, so if they get sick, they don’t get thrown off, so they don’t have these huge premium increases of the sort we’ve just seen announced in states around the country, they say yes.
But again, when you go underneath, they support the elements of the plan. When you ask them, does the health care system need reform, three quarters of them say yes. When you ask them, do you want Congress to move forward and deal with this issue, three quarters of them say yes. So we’re not going to walk away from this issue.
David Axelrod’s arguement is most people are in favor of the details in the bill, therefore it is a good idea. One detail Axelrod left out–the majority of people are opposed to making health insurance mandatory. Leaving out the “mandatory” part is no small detail to be ignored, and here is why:
If polled most Americans would probably answer yes to all these question.
- Would you like the cost of food and clothing to go down?
- Would you like the cost of your housing to never go up?
- Do you want to prevent people from ever going homeless?
- Would you like not having to struggle to make ends meet?
- Would you like to live in a country that was more organized?
- Do you want congress to take action to make your life simpler?
- Are you in favor of the federal government regulating work place rules?
Using the same rational as David Axelrod: If you leave out the detail of losing your freedom, we can conclude most people are really in favor of slavery.
