While contemptuous of "framing" (Lakoff's attempt to copyright the time-honored practice of political propaganda as his own academic invention), Rosenbaum's argument boils down essentially to a claim that the phrase "public option" is ineffective propaganda while "death panels" is effective propaganda. That may or may not be true, we'd need a baseline to know how many people were swayed by both campaigns and a regression analysis to appreciate the confounders. The analysis is impossible. There are a million reasons why government-run health insurance will probably fail in this country, and Rosenbaum's view that the marketing campaign is significantly responsible is not only unsupported by any evidence, but ironically, an example of the very Lakoffian approach he claims to criticize.

since the democrats removed "death panels" from the legislation ("end of life counselling"), but the public option is creeping back in, you'd have to say that people really don't feel as strongly (for or against) "public option" as being told to give it up and die cheaply because they're old

As Rosenbaum correctly noted in the piece, the "death panels" kerfluffle was not about "end of life counseling". It's about rationing.

Health care is rationed now, like everything else. Limited resources+demand for resources = some form of resource allocation. There's a whole social science set up around the study of this process. I believe it's referred to as economics.

@ moloch

Right. Rosenbaum seems to think the practice of "framing" is stupid, but then he appears to call for-- better framing?

Still a decent article, though.