"People have been hit with a lot of bad information"
Speaking in Missouri yesterday, President Obama talked about the misinformation on reform that he sees in the letters he reads from everyday Americans each night:
"When the health care reform debate was really heating up, one of the things that I heard from a lot of seniors was, “Keep your government hands out of my Medicare.” They say, “I don’t want your government-run health care plan, and don’t touch my Medicare.”And so I’d have to write back and I’d say, “Ma’am,” or “Sir, Medicare is a government program. But we’re not going go weaken it. We’re going to make it stronger.”
But I think those letters tell you something about what sometimes happened in this health care debate, because people have been hit with a lot of bad information. And health care is really important. And so people get worried and they get nervous. But when you get past the divisive and the deceptive rhetoric, it turns out that most Americans are happy that two generations ago we made the decision that seniors and the poor should not be saddled with unaffordable health care costs or forced to go without needed care."
As the President highlighted, oftentimes much of the fear surrounding health reform comes from people paying attention to the bad information that’s out there — and not the facts about reform. for yesterday’s first day in OFA’s week-long "Final March for Reform," supporters began spreading the facts about reform in their communities. With smears clouding the debate and anti-reform lobbyists stepping up their efforts, supporters are getting the truth out to family, friends, and co-workers.
Getting the facts out is a key way of making the case for reform. In a post on Tuesday, Ezra Klein took an in-depth look at a recent poll on health reform — which showed that many who said they oppose reform actually reported simply wanting more information on how it would work. Klein reports:
"The top reason [cited by opponents] was that the bill "will raise the cost of insurance or make it less affordable." It’s understandable why people say that. But the best evidence we have is that it’s not true… [The Gallup poll is evidence] that many of those in opposition do not know that much about the bill."
