David Brady on Health Care Reform, Public Opinion, and Party Politics

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4.7 • 4.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 August 2009

⏱️ 71 minutes

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Summary

David Brady of Stanford University talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about American public opinion on changing the health care system. Brady discusses the impact of taxation on public opinion toward health care reform--if the poll includes a measure of the likely increase in taxes necessary to pay for expanding coverage, support for expanding coverage drops dramatically compared to generic polls that ignore costs. He also discusses the role of the party system and partisanship for the health care issue and more generally, how partisanship has changed over time. The conversation concludes with Brady's views on how much science there is in political science.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econ Talk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
0:12.5	I'm your host Russ Roberts of George Mason University and Stanford University's Hoover
0:17.3	Institution.
0:18.7	Our website is econtalk.org, where you can subscribe, find other episodes, comment on this podcast,
0:25.8	and find links to other information related to today's conversation.
0:29.9	Our email address is mailadicontalk.org, we'd love to hear from you.
0:38.7	Today is July 27, 2009, and my guest is David Brady, the Davies Family Senior Fellow at
0:44.0	Stanford University's Hoover Institution, the Bowen H and Janissar Thermagoi Professor
0:48.8	of Political Science and Leadership Values, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business,
0:52.8	and a mere Professor of Political Science at Stanford.
0:56.2	Dave, welcome to Econ Talk.
0:58.0	Thank you.
0:59.0	Our topic for today is the Politics of Change, and in particular, the Politics of Healthcare
1:04.6	Change.
1:05.6	Paul, after Paul seems to indicate, and this goes back quite some time, certainly goes
1:10.9	back into the early 1990s, Paul's indicated desire for healthcare reform, yet little change
1:18.6	gets made.
1:19.6	Why do you think that is?
1:20.6	I think there are two reasons.
1:23.3	The first one is in the abstract, there's a desire for change.
1:27.9	There's something wrong, and you read the press, and you know, we have lots of people
1:32.4	in the United States who aren't covered, so people say it needs change, but on the other
	...

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