Intentional Obfuscation?

Poll Shows Americans Confused by Medicare Changes

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - American seniors are keenly interested in the new Medicare bill signed into law last December, but more than two-thirds are confused about it, according to a survey released on Thursday.
The survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation shows just 15 percent of people over 65, who will be most affected by the new prescription drug law, understand it very well. And the younger general public understands it even less well.

The new bill added prescription drug coverage to Medicare, the government's health care plan for older Americans, and boosted the roles of private health maintenance organizations and the drug industry.

Nearly 70 percent of those polled did not understand that it was a bill passed in Congress and signed into law by President Bush, the nonprofit research group said.

"The lack of understanding of the prescription drug law makes it ripe for political demagoguery on both sides as we enter the election season," Kaiser President Drew Altman said in a statement.

"The president will say he delivered a good prescription drug law and the Democratic candidate will say it's a bad law. How are seniors to judge?"

Both sides have launched advertising campaigns about the law, with many Democrats complaining the federal government's ads amount to political campaign. They have asked the General Accounting Office, the investigational arm of Congress, to check.

Princeton Survey Research Associates International called 1,201 adults for the survey, including 237 over 64.

They found that 49 percent of all adults and 64 percent of seniors said they had followed the Medicare prescription drug debate "very closely" or "somewhat closely."

More at link

If you got to the Kaiser Family Foundation, what should strike you is that just 15% say they understand the new prescription drug law very well. To me this is a red flag.

Like all polls, answering yes to a question, and actually having a working knowledge of the issue being polled are two very different things.

I remind you of the polls taken pre, during and post Iraq War II, that showed that more than two thirds of Americans believed that, "Hussein was personally responsible for the fall of the Trade Towers."

This demonstrates an obvious disconnect between reality and perception. I believe that the same effect is occurring with seniors' degree of understanding of Medicare Reform. Of course I may be wrong, but time and again, the more you deeply you delve into a person's understanding of most anything, you'll find that they hold demonstrably false beliefs.

I always try and cut out the politics of an issue, and get to the core truth. I'm not always successful in this pursuit, as things are often nuanced beyond my ability to explain them cogently, or error free.

Since this issue is of such paramount importance to ALL Americans, I found a table of benefits that is strictly factual. This table lists the various timelines and benefit options in as clear a format as I've yet found.

Although I am truly certain of few things, it seems a good bet that both sides of aisle will selectively extract data to support their positions, and that of their party.

The GOP is going most certainly hail the passage of the bill into law as a boon to seniors, and the Dems will paint the law as a giveaway to HMOs and big Pharma, while not going far enough to protect seniors. There is of course
some truth to all of this.

As this is likely to remain an issue well into the future, it serves us all well to learn as much as we can the new structures, and separate the rhetoric from fact. No law is perfect. Doing the small amount of legwork to truly have a working knowledge of the facts of the issue are your best defense against demagoguery.

Read. Learn. Know stuff. That's the bs motto. Never allow anyone to steal your power through obfuscation of the facts.