The Washington Post reports today (10/19/09)on its new poll on healthcare reform. The headline is straightforward enough: “Public Option Gains Support: Clear Majority Now Backs Plan.” But it’s not clear there’s much news here.
The public option has 57 percent support in the new poll. In the last poll (one month ago–9/10-12/09), it got 55 percent support. As the story points out further down, support was at 62 percent before all the town halls. It’s a reminder that while the media have given a whole lot of time to critics of public insurance options in general, the public remains surprisingly supportive of the concept.
But it’s even more important to remember that the last time the Post wrote uptheirpoll results (9/14/09), they seemed eager to stress the unpopularity of the public option. Just look at the headline: “Reform Opposition Is High but Easing: More Support if Public Option Dropped.”
Apparently the two-point swing in the poll means a lot; something supported by 57 percent of people is popular, while the same thing supported by a mere 55 percent should be jettisoned.
Wow, that last comment wasn’t a comment….it was an advertisement. Perhaps FAIR should consider removing it.
It’s clear, that much confusion exists about this “public” option. The general public doesn’t know or care much about the details. But it does care about the public, because it’s them we’re talking about, or so they think. If the final bill is hopelessly watered down, who will know or care? That’s a detail, right? Obama has been given a free hand here. He can hoodwink the public, in the meantime, he allows the guts and essence of these bills, to be quashed, while he gets the credit for a populist move. Media are always in line here, and will trumpet the final bill, on behalf of the economic elite’s demands. It’s “public,” after all.
Yeah…and what percentage of the population won’t settle for a mere namby-pamby “public option” unless it is unequivocably universal, non-profit health care?
I’ve blogged about some of this survey and posted it at Firedog Lake here:
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/10593
My analysis is a bit more definitive than the one above.
The Public Option is a half measure. I am totally in favor of Single Payer Universal Health Care.
It’s long past the time the United States should catch up to the rest of the industrialized world!
Health Care is a fundamental right, not a mere privilege!
If the Democrats do not pass the Public Option, I’ll never vote Democratic again. I’ll vote Green, or Peace and Freedom, or not vote.
FYI: I have voted Democratic since JFK.
Of course we are all (or most of us, anyway) strong supporters of single payer. However, as a lot of us recognized many months ago, this wasn’t going to happen – at least not this time around. So, the issue is can we get a public option that is actually competitive with for-profit health “insurance” plans. If so, it is worth supporting; if not, is there any need to use resources and time to pass something less? This is a serious question because, if a plan without a “robust” (i.e. competitive) public option was approved that included (i) no rejection for pre-existing conditions; (ii) no life time caps on pay outs; (iii) some subsidies that made it possible for poeople like my daughter (no income now, some in the future) to be covered so that ERs would not be swamped with people for whom that is the only choice; and (iv) accessible to a significant segment of the population, would that be worth something??
Please, no diatribes in response are needed : serious debate is needed here.
I am puzzled Bill by your statement that single payer “wasn’t going to happen”. Some of you had this insight “many months ago”.
Rather than congratulate you, I must ask: How is it that you passively allow the media to make these decissions for you?
What part of USA “democracy” doesn’t the majority get?
The present “incrementalist” strategy is that Medicaid would be made universal for children (say, “6 & under”)… and by the time that a significant wave of them had passed over the age limit, additional legislation would expand coverage to “10 & under”… etc and we’d have a National Health maintenance Plan in a generation. I suppose a much more satisfying option would be to declare that all hospitals above a certain size must be managed as “non-profit” institutions… but THAT lobby is as strong as the private insurers’. Perhaps a round of The Plague would convince people (who must yet be convinced) that “we are all in this together”. There’s nothing more democratic than a microbe…
^..^
Single payer is best. Public Option is better than nothing. Anything else IS nothing. / Just saw a TV clip on Danmark (here in France – I doubt it played in the states). The Danish smile a lot. They pay high taxes and have lousy weather BUT they don’t worry about health care, access to education has nothing to do with money. Opposed to the greed-is-good/us-and-them mentality in the states, they believe in being their brother’s keeper – sort of the Golden Rule. / It’s toooooooooooo baaaaaaaaad that Americans listen to the money/propaganda and vote to shoot themselves in the foot.
Has someone notified the FOX non-news network about this?
The poll numbers aren’t as important as how the poll questions are asked. That’s the information I would like to see.
Single payer, as in Congressman John Conyers’ House Bill H.R.676 and Senator Bernie Sanders’ Senate companion bill S.703, would be the only bills (google these bills and you will see how comprehensive they are) that would be UNIVERSAL “Medicare for All;” the other Congressional bills, and ‘Obamacare’ would only cover about 97% of Americans — leaving an estimated 16 million Americans out in the cold.
Enrolling ALL Americans into Medicare would cost an estimated $64 billions over about 15 years, because Medicare administrative costs are only about 4%, whereas private health insurance charges about 30% for administration (this includes the egregiously excessive remuneration for CEOs and profits for the share-holders). All the other bills being offered cost close to $1 TRILLION, over ten times as much as “Medicare for All.” Why should we pay so much more for less care?
Coverage, coverage, coverage.
We don’t need no stinkin’ coverage!
We need care.
Coverage is NOT care.
Single-payer, Medicare for all is the ONLY solution.
Everything else is just putting lipstick on a pig.
I’m obviously late in this discussion. But when Joshua Says:October 21st, 2009 at 6:15 am
“Wow, that last comment wasn’t a commentâ┚¬Ã‚¦.it was an advertisement. Perhaps FAIR should consider removing it.”
What was that comment advertising? Perhaps it was advertising that polls should be left out of the discussion, but since polls are a big part of the reporting shouldn’t they at least be mentioned? I kind of side with Anna Galvin who argues against the business of ‘coverage’. Coverage might be merely a means of hiding the awful smell until the hearse arrives. Single-payer is a must & it should not be ‘affordable’, because as soon as affordability is applied so is means-testing.
Just noting that the “advertisement” comment was some kind of spam that made it through the spam filter, and it was deleted.
What is it about healthcare reform that has the Bachmanns and the rest of the republicans so scared that they are willing to incite to violence. In the news today there was Bachman and the House minority leader inciting a revolution. And the funny thing is that there are people out there ignorant ienough to believe thier lies. I say it is funny because we pay senators and congress people a good salary, their insurance is paid for, they have good retirement and they are supposed to be working for us, and yet we are scrunching and being abused by the people we hired to represent us. What is wrong with some of our Americans so called citizens? It doesn’t seem logical to rational people. I know they must be worried about the debt, but we just bailed out Wall Street and the economy is not getting any better. How come we had the money for them and not for something so necessary as health care reform?