Just got back from a week-long family visit in Southern Ohio, and had a good chance to observe the US political scene up close – particularly in regard to health care.
    This meant seeing, first hand, the phenomenon we have been predicting and writing about at ZoomerMedia for some time – the emergence of Zoomers as a political force to be reckoned with.
    Because make no mistake about it – it is the Zoomers (and particularly those who have been traditionally labeled “seniors”, the 65–plus segment) who are making the most noise right now and are doing the most to derail the health care program that President Obama is trying to put into place.
    There are a number of lessons here for Canadians.

1. Zoomers really do control the ballot box.

Despite all the hype about how Obama galvanized the youth vote, the statistics show that it is still the 45-plus voters who control elections. The percentage of votes cast by under-30 voters was less than two percentage points higher than it was in the Bush-Kerry election — and still below what it was in…are you ready for it…1972.

2. Health care is a hugely emotional issue…and needs simple, factual explanations

Forget what you’ve read in the Canadian media about the US health care debate. This isn’t about ideology, it’s about clarity. For some reason, Obama has made a number of enforced errors:
- outsourced the drafting of the legislation to Nancy Pelosi, whose approval rating is lower than that of Dick Cheney
- indicated that the cost of bringing in wider public health care would be offset by cost savings in Medicare (which is the name given in the USA to public medical coverage for seniors) without stating precisely how those cost savings would be realized
- allowed the selling message to be diffused among several different spokespeople (including himself) who all had different takes on what the legislation did, or did not, say

The result? Seniors freaking out over the prospect of losing their Medicare coverage, and being given little or no concrete detail as to why their fears are unfounded.

This is a communications fiasco of the first order. You can’t be seen to be taking something away from someone and expect them to be happy.

3. The real issues are politically lethal

Quite apart from mishandling the communications, Obama is playing with fire on another front. It’s a front where I believe he deserves a considerable amount of credit – but at the same time, runs huge risks. Obama is trying to confront some of the real issues of rising health care costs – costs that will eventually engulf any health care system – public, private, or hybrid.

These issues require frank discussion of uncomfortable topics – topics that hit particularly close to home for seniors. For example: how much money should the public pay for late-life medical care? Should a publicly-funded health care system be required, for example, to put up $1 million a year to get someone from age 85 to age 88? If there is a limited amount of money to pay for hip replacements, should the funds be allocated to people over 90 (vs. people under 80)? These are brutal questions to ask. Yet eventually they do get asked, and they get asked not for moral or ethical reasons, but because the money is finite.

What does society owe to seniors? Is it a blank check – or can it (should it) be limited, somehow? And if so, who decides? And on what basis? And who gets the money instead? (A big factor in the discontent of seniors in the USA, I learned, is that over a quarter of the people who are not now covered by health insurance and who would be covered under a public plan, are illegal immigrants).

These are serious questions. Obama may deserve some praise for at least being ready to debate them, but in strictly political terms, it borders on suicide to do it the way he has chosen to:
- at a time of great economic upheaval and runaway deficits
- through a complex (over 1,000 pages), hastily-drafted bill that contained some gratuitously inflammatory sections (e.g., juxtaposing cost control” and “end-of-life counseling”)
- with a vague, unfocused, and in many ways inept communications program

Seniors are on the warpath, make no mistake. They are not going to easily relinquish the medical coverage they now have in the existing public health program, Medicare. If health coverage is to be expanded to include more government-funded options, it has to be explained how these options will be funded without cutting back the coverage that is now in Medicare.
Otherwise, seniors have the clout to bring this bill down.

Canadian political leaders would do well to watch carefully.

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