[baddox]

The trouble with your example of healthcare is that Americans for whatever reason overwhelmingly approve of the American system of private health insurance plans, and even if they didn’t, I don’t think many would make an association between expensive health care and fundamental problems with the scientific community.

[keenmaster]

I'm highly skeptical of the "overwhelmingly approve" part.

Do Americans overwhelmingly approve of the deprivation of their disposable income and health due to the broken status quo? Of course not. It's just that many don't connect the dots because the debate isn't even happening. Democrats and Republicans are captured. The media doesn't seem interested. The system is too complex for people to even understand and know what to criticize. Most Americans don't even grok the fact that they would receive employer-paid premiums as salary under universal healthcare. They don't have a clue how well universal healthcare works in other countries and how widely approved it is (relative to a privatized system). Saying that Americans overwhelmingly approve of their private insurance plan is like saying Russians overwhelmingly approve of Putin...ya, ok, but I don't think the people who repeat that statement know how meaningless it is.

Do you know what American political scientists call foreign democracies with captured politicians, distorted media, and widespread corporate cronyism but...ostensible elections? Pseudo-democracies. There's a spectrum from democracy to pseudo-democracy, and we all know where we're headed.

As for the connection to trust in science, I already spoke about that from one angle (the exploitative interface between the average American and their medical care). Another angle is the following: the very same medical paternalism that broke our healthcare system also broke the institutional guidance regarding COVID-19.

[baddox]

I don’t really want to get into arguments of the form “they think they want X but they actually want Y,” because if you’re willing to use that mode of argument then it’s completely irrelevant to you what people think or say they want, and you might as well just argue for what they “actually” want without any regard for their input.

But the fact of the matter is that common proposals to overhaul the American health insurance system are extremely unpopular, and people overwhelmingly report being very happy with their private insurance plans.

[keenmaster]

How about this: 58% of Americans favored Medicare for All according to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll. This was back in 2015, when people were in a less medically and economically precarious position, and despite all the aforementioned misunderstandings regarding universal healthcare. I'm sure the medical industry will play up the "but mah haylth insurance" trope as the prospect of universal healthcare becomes more real. https://www.kff.org/uninsured/poll-finding/kaiser-health-tra...