‘Media literacy’ advocates push to create savvier consumers of news and information | Editorial Read more
In the final few weeks of the presidential campaign, the media and public debate have become increasingly polarized on both issues of party and policy. While the major party candidates and candidates for the other seven GOP presidential contenders have repeatedly said that, if elected, they will not change the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the most significant piece of recent reform, the Democrats are pursuing their own agenda, which is, for the fourth time in two presidential terms, focused on a single piece of policy: the implementation of single-payer healthcare.
The Democratic candidates’ call for a single-payer healthcare system, of course, has been roundly rejected by mainstream media outlets, while the Republican field has not yet responded to the Democratic proposal. Moreover, the Republicans’ single-payer healthcare proposals will almost certainly be the driving force behind their eventual presidential nominee.
However, while the Democratic candidates may feel that their proposals are on the wrong side of history, they have something that the Republicans do not have: a long line of policy victories over the last 30 years that have helped create a large and diverse, media-savvy American electorate.
Over the years, the Democrats have consistently scored large policy wins regarding healthcare: the Affordable Care Act (often called Obamacare), the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (or, in Democratic shorthand, the ACA), and more broadly, the Affordable Care Act (or the ACA).
A recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found that support for a single-payer system is at least as popular as the ACA, which, at 58% approval, is the highest rating on any topic in the survey’s 25 years of polling. An older survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that support for single-payer was even higher, at 65%.
And as Vox’s Tara Golshan has noted, as many as 80% of Americans now trust the scientific consensus from a variety of fields, including climate change and vaccinations, to be accurate.
This trust in science is not restricted to
