Are we really that stupid?

Are we Americans really that stupid?

Of course this is a rhetorical question and of course the answer is yes. And here is why this morning:

Iowa Poll: 47% oppose health care reform effort
By TONY LEYS • tleys@dmreg.com • September 25, 2009

When asked how they feel about the overall health reform plans, 47 percent of Iowans say they're opposed, and 43 percent say they're in favor.

However, most Iowans say they like specific reform ideas, such as health care co-ops, a national insurance exchange, a requirement that employers offer policies, and a requirement that U.S. residents have coverage. Even one of the most controversial proposals, to create government-run "public-option" insurance plans, draws support from a slight majority. Iowans oppose only one of the six specific options noted by the poll - the idea of cutting payments to doctors and hospitals.

A national expert said the Iowa Poll's findings are consistent with those of many national polls. "When you talk about specific options, people tend to think they're pretty good ideas," said Mollyann Brodie, who oversees polling for the Kaiser Family Foundation. However, she said, many Americans worry that bills being debated in Congress will wind up costing too much and harming their families' medical care and health insurance.

Poll participants who expressed negative attitudes about the debate in Washington, D.C., were asked to rank reasons for their feelings. Their top-ranked reason was the sense that "members of Congress are not being truthful about what is and is not being considered." Next came feelings that the proposals would be too expensive and that the plan "sounds like socialism."

Oh, jesus christ, "sounds like socialism." Do the morons who say things like that even know what socialism is? Again this is a rhetorical question this time, however, the answer is no.

As an example of how stupid those contacted by the Iowa Poll are, from the same news story:

Poll participant Carol Cox of Clinton agrees with all of those statements.

"I think the cost is going to be so much more than they say it's going to be, and it feels like we're getting closer and closer to socialism," Cox, a Republican, said in a follow-up interview.

Cox, 61, said she's always had good insurance through her husband's work as a school administrator, but her volunteer service brings her in contact with people who have no insurance. She wants private-market reforms that will help cover such people, but she doesn't think the government needs to expand public programs to achieve that goal.

Cox plans to sign up for Medicare when she's 65. She thinks Medicare generally is a good program, but she worries that it will be hurt by politicians' efforts to add other public insurance plans. "I'm afraid they'll rob Peter to pay Paul," she said.

And

[Barbara Larson, 66, of Knoxville] said she and her husband have been happy with their health insurance, which for years was through Blue Cross and now is through Medicare. She noted other polls showing most other Americans feel the same way. Some Americans are uninsured, and the country should help them, she said. "But when 80 percent are happy, why do we have to revamp the whole insurance system to cover a small percentage?"

Here we see the magnanimity, the humanity of the oldest of the aging Boomers. They got theirs so fuck everybody else.

And the stupidest "argument" against a public option and mandated insurance I have heard in this "debate" from Republicans and Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh is that young, healthy people think they don't need health care insurance. Anyway, society will take care of them if they have a traumatic accident or a serious illness, right?

Well, way don't we take this "libertarian" argument against a socialist medical system and extent it to its "logical" conclusion and tell these young, healthy anti-mandated health care insurance kids: "If you get your leg cut off and you don't have medical insurance, society has no obligation to treat you. Bleed to death. If you're 25-years-old, get cancer and don't have insurance, society has no obligation to cure you."

Yes sir, Jimmy Carter was so right when he said America deserves government as good as its people.