Delivering Health Care Reform for the Middle Class

SUMMARY

This memo offers a three-step strategy for transforming support into success using results from a new poll by Third Way and Benenson Strategy Group.

STEP 1: Understand the principal hurdle to reform. The middle class cannot yet answer the question “what’s in it for me?” By the end of this debate, Harry and Louise must be able to easily articulate how health care reform will personally benefit them.

STEP 2: Make a significant offer of personal benefit to the middle class. That offer, we believe, is “stability”—stable coverage, stable costs, and stable quality. In our survey, “stability” not only trumped other messages, it was by far the policy offer that respondents wanted most from reform. Importantly, it is also the substantive outcome that reform would bring to the middle class.

STEP 3: Paint a vivid portrait of the consequences of inaction. Our poll shows that while they can’t quite articulate the benefits of reform, the middle class is certain that the failure of reform would lead to instability and insecurity in their coverage, costs, and care. Supporters of reform must ring the alarm about the consequences of inaction and make opponents own those dire consequences.

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