Health Care BS

David Harlow asks an interesting question about the increasing emphasis placed on health care reform by the various presidential candidates:

This is one of those classic chicken-and-egg questions: Are the candidates talking health care because that’s what people want to hear (chicken), or do people say they’re concerned about health care because Hillary, John, Barack, Dennis, Mitt and the rest of them are talking health care (egg)? 

Harlow is voting the “egg” ticket, but I’m not sure I can pull the lever for that theory. I think the candidates are talking about it because their internal polling and focus groups have indicated this is a hot issue. Moreover, it meets the all important “anything but Iraq” criterion.

As to why health care has supplanted the economy as the number one concern (after Iraq), I think most Americans have finally figured out that the economy is in far better shape than the various mass media have led them to believe. That leaves health care as the most clear and present danger to their wallets.