Public's love/hate relationship with health care bill
Another interesting Pew poll, this one covering the health care bill, the economy and public views of various political leaders.
The finding on health care is that the majority of Americans favor the main provisions that are featured in most of the bills, but don't like the overall bill. Hmmm. What think of that?
Specifically, solid majorities from 55 percent ranging up to 82 percent say that they favor requiring all Americans to have health insurance, favor having the government subsidize those who can't afford it, favor requiring employers who do not provide health insurance to pay into a government fund to help the uninisured afford insurance, favor raising taxes on the wealthiest families to pay for the changes and 55 percent even favor the crazy Bolshevik idea of creating a government owned and operated health insurance plan to compete with private plans (that 55 is up a statistically insignificant three points from the last time Pew asked the question).
So, given that most of us support most of the main elements of the bill, naturally more Americans say they generally oppose the health care reform proposals in Congress (47%) than favor them (34%).
Other pollsters are getting the same results, by the way. Here's the summary paragraph on health care from a fresh Quinnipiac Poll:
"American voters oppose 47 - 40 percent President Barack Obama's health care reform plan, and don't want an overhaul that only gets Democratic votes, but they support key parts of the plan, including 61-34 percent for giving people the option of a government health insurance plan that competes with private plans."
There are lots of ways to try to understand how we like the specifics in the bill but not the overall bill, most of them not very flattering to the notion of the smart, attentive, rational, deliberative electorate. Let's face it: The current health care system is incredibly complicated and so are the 1,000-page bills that are designed to make it better. I can't grasp it all, and I, being from Lake Wobegone, pay above-average attention. But I do note that 53 percent of respondents said they had heard little or nothing about the bills. Hmmm. It's always fun to blame the media, but I'd say a citizen wouldn't have had to try too hard to have read/heard/seen a good bit about the bill.
On other matters, the new Pew poll finds that approval of Dem leaders in Congress has plummeted (from 47/35 approve/disapprove in March to 33/53, with the biggest drop in approval coming from self-described Democrats in the sample) while approval of Repubs has merely hit an all-time low of 12 percent.
The public has all kinds of interesting and mixed views of Pres. Obama. His overall approval rating seems to be holding steady just above 50 percent. But I'll refer to this longer, Pew-written summary if you want to look for your own favorite details.
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Comments (11)
It's a poll, folks. Tune in tomorrow for the next installment of (for us oldsters) "The perils of Pauline" or (for all the rest) "24".
Once a single bill has finally been crafted, hornswaggled through the multitude of barriers to passage, and -- forcing reluctant congress members to vote "aye" or "nay" -- has been passed or not, when the spin has begun to die down and real analysis begins,
then, and only then, will people believe what is being said about the bill and will harden their opinions about it.
And , if it passes, only after they begin to feel the pain of individual provisions will the inevitable outcries begin, and the moves to ameliorate its deficincies.
I hope we get something done, and I hope it will not harm us and our society too much, and perhaps actually deal with the out of control COSTS (not payments), unjust limitations on coverage, and unbridled profit-taking we now experience.
But perhaps that is hoping for too much.
I don't think this is too surprising. They want great stuff for free. Isn't that everyone's dream? I wish everyone could have great health care without any real expense but I can recognize that there is a real trade off. Reality won't go away just because we want it to.
Distrust in congress probably has something to do with it too. Despite years of talking about getting special interests out of the loop they've been very open about co-writing this thing with the various lobbies. They tried to ram it through in an insanely short period of time so no one could actually look at the bill. Now they're opposed to a 72 hour look before voting on it. The whole whole business smells very fishy.
Our health care industry obviously needs some overhaul. The proposed solutions will be wildly expensive and won't fix the actual problems. It's no wonder opposition is growing.
I guess I'm on the liberal end of this debate because I would love a single payer plan and at a minimum would like a government option. I pretty much favor all the options described in the article but may not favor the bill because it has been compromised too much to gather a few votes.
According to the articles I skim the provisions aren't set and keep shifting so it is hard to be for what is not known, although I can understand and approve the individual options.
In my opinion no Republican will ever vote for this bill and it is a waste of time to search for any compromise that will include them. No matter how good and valuable the plan is, the Republican position is to vote against anything that would make Obama look good. They are Republicans before they are citizens.
I think the best option is to come out with a strong, fixed bill with all the best options in it including single-payer, or at least the government option, then start pushing that fixed plan to the public. Then you can start gathering in the opposing Demorcrats who are probably more beholden to special interests than they are to their constituents. Right now since there is no real fixed target the Republicans, like Bachmann, can lob false statements and hysterical arguments whose smoke obscures the truth. It is hard to get the more reasonable majority of the public behind the plan because there is no real final plan yet.
Bill, a suggestion if I may, you could actually go out and meet some of those awful Republicans who you seem to think want people to die for their political gain. If you did so, you could possibly understand that they think they're working for the best of the country too. They just have a different vision of how to get there. They probably agree that our current system is a mess but don't think that a hasty push for gov't control is really going to fix it.
And it's a bit rich to accuse the opponents of being beholden to special interests when the proponents have openly worked with several lobbies to create this monstrosity. You seem to be letting your angels and devils version of reality cloud your vision.
Peder--
Most people seem to want some sort of health care reform of the sort that the Democrats are proposing, although they have a lot of doubt and skepticism about the specifics.
And there is no evidence that public support for health care reform is dropping, and I suspect that the new figures showing the reduced cost of the most current proposal will increase public support further.
In this debate, there has been so much bald-faced lying, so many red herring, such corrupt chicanery, such brazen venality, such a contempt for the voter, that the public, debilitated, can be forgiven for fearing they are once again going to get the shaft after all is said and done.
#3 hit it on the head with “there is no real final plan yet”. Example: that famous Magnum Opus out of the Senate Finance Committee? It hasn’t even been reduced to legislative language yet, so the d*mn thing can’t even be scored by the Congressional Budget Office! And this is the centerpiece? If the CBO scores it badly - if those Senators in the “Gang of Six”, interestingly from our least-populated states, guessed wrong - we can expect vital components to come flying out the transom over Max Baucus’ locked door, or perhaps their entire package could collapse, inviable.
It makes sense to me to poll people on specific elements within the latest versions of the conglomerate proposals - such as asking whether they favor making the termination of policies due to adverse health events unlawful. Here, the respondents can give a real answer to a real question.
But in the current situation to ask the same group whether they are in favor of the whole makes no sense at all. There is no whole thing yet to have an opinion about.
It seems to me that when people look at the many aspects of the health bills they are looking at the micro issues - and most can agree that they are in need of a serious tweak.
But when they look at an entire bill those micro issues all conglomerate into one macro issue that's hard to name. It becomes "Obama Care". So what's changed? Is it possible that on the individual issues, people want success and the poll numbers bear this out, but when our president's face becomes the identifier we come up against that percentage of people that would be pleased to see Obama fail?
The same percentage that dislikes anything he has touched...?
Peder, here's my list of devils from the last 10 years or so: the Swift Boaters, the people in the last administration who consciously lied to start an immoral war, the Republicans who were accusing Hillary of murder, the several Republican hypocrits who were voting to impeach Clinton while cheating on their wives, Michelle Bachmann with her death camps and secret knowledge of training camps in Iraq and all her other distortions and outright lies, the last Republican VP candidate who was unable to name one news magazine she had ever read, Norm Coleman who's first campaign ad was a negative attack on his opponent via his bowling buddies ad, The southern Republicans who have to play to the predjudices of their racists supporters to let them know they are "good old boys, our current governer with his slash and burn attack on welfare programs and support for tax cuts for the rich, all the Republicans who voted to deregulate all those people who brought on the current economic crisis. I could go on. I have read many quotes from Republicans who show they have no interest in voting for anything positive during a Democratic administration because it isn't good for their side in the game of politics.
Maybe you aren't on that list and you are truly a man of genuine conscience, an angel. I probably voted for Arne at least once back before your party got taken over by the devils. I was a moderate for many years but was pushed out of your camp by all the bs your party has been pulling since the days of Newt Gingrich. I feel fine about my vision.
Ok Bill, let's play that game. The devils on your side of the aisle include:
The tax cheat who currently heads the tax committee. All of the other tax cheats in cabinet positions. People who blame deregulation without being able to name which regulations brought about the recession. People who lie about Bush lying us into war. People who accuse fair minded small gov't protesters of racism in an attempt to poison the well. Legislators who 'believed' that maybe 9/11 was an inside job because they thought it would hurt Republicans. People who spread lies about Jim Crow coming back if Republicans are elected. People who complain about all of the money that the other side is raking in from lobbyists while ignoring the piles of cash that their people get. Probably more, but that's just off the top of my head.
Politics can be an ugly thing. Power attracts some of the worst people. That's why I assume devils on both sides. It's also one of the reasons that I doubt this congress can possibly pass some kind of large and clean bill. This already has special interest finger prints all over it. I'd rather fix the actual system than just reward the interest that took the money first.
Peder: Mr. Rangel asked the ethics board to investigate him. They have been doing so for quite a while, issuing updated reports every so often. So far, no crimes of note (but some marginal stuff).
Bush didn't lie? Only if he thought he was telling the truth about the WMD because he believed the lies told him by Cheney, Rumsfeld and all the other neocons who chose him as their figurehead in order to attack the "axis of evil" countries Iraq, Iran and Syria. Oh, and to get their oil, which apparently is not evil.
Right now, it is highly possible that the neocons put in place the questionable "intelligence" that is being touted to make the world believe Iran will be bombing Israel as soon as it gets a bomb ready to go. (See Gareth Porter, "Leaked Iran Paper Based on Intel that Split IAEA," October 6, www.ipsnews.net or www.commondreams.org.)
We have lived through eight years of lies (WMD, anyone? Yellow cake from Niger?), tax and spending policies that, together with the failure to regulate the financial services industry, have left us with a society in which the top few percent hold almost all the wealth and the rest of us get the crumbs that fall from their tables.
It makes me chuckle when people rant about lies and liars in our politics.
In the English parliament, it is fine to call another member a liar, but not to call him/her ignorant. Just the opposite here.
Lying was done, and charged in the Federalist Papers, when the Constitution was being debated. Hamilton and Madison (and Jay for one) wrote the 85 installments for New York papers for the express purpose of putting to rest the flood of lies and misrepresentations being fostered by opponents. In spite of their being printed almost daily in all the significant papers, New York only reluctantly approved the Constitution after they heard another state had given the crucial 9th vote in favor. That's how bad the lies were, and how harmful.
Abe Lincoln, in one of his debates with Douglas, said "I don't want to call him a liar, but when I come square up to him, I don't know what else to call him." (Part of what was unusual about Lincoln was his reputation as "Honest Abe.")
And so until this very day, when lies and accusations of lies are all around us -- AS USUAL!
Sometimes people are honestly in error. But people lie, have always lied, and will always lie, even though it is the failing most destructive of open and rational communication.
Protest achieves little. Our task is to sort out the facts from the lies, as it has always been. And, as grown ups, to quit protesting about it.