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.