Bloggers are chewing over one particular finding of a new Washington Post/ABC poll: a “clear majority” of Americans support a public plan option in a health overhaul bill.
Critical Condition’s Jeffrey Anderson says some of the questions seem like they were “written by Democrats:” “The ‘public option’ question reads as if the Democrats wrote it, phrasing it as a means to increase competition: ‘Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans?’ Not surprisingly, when asked the question in that way, people have supported the “public option” across the months.”
Anderson discusses other poll results before concluding, “In all, Americans clearly think that the Democrats’ plans would grant the government too much control, badly weaken Medicare, and increase the deficit — and they oppose the imposition of new taxes. That’s a recipe for defeat, and opponents of Obamacare should take heart.”
The Washington Post’s Ezra Klein looks at one question–whether respondents favor a bill with a public plan option and no Republican support, or a bill with no public option but with Republican support–and concludes, “Not only is the public option popular, but it is literally more popular than bipartisanship.”
Think Progess’ Matthew Yglesias says, “I think the main takeaway the deeper you bore into the poll is that (as usually) public opinion doesn’t have great grasp of policy detail.” Yglesias hones in on a question about support if a public plan was operated by states only or if it was limited to people without access to private insurance, and says it’s too open to intrepretation: “So on one construction of making the public option ‘available only to people who did not have a choice of affordable private insurance’ we’re not talking about modifying the standard public option plan at all. But on another construction of the phrase we’re talking about creating a public option that nobody would be eligible for.” (emphasis his)
The American Spectator’s Philip Klein is also wary of the public’s grasp of policy:
As I noted last week, a Pew poll found that only 56 percent of the public recognized that the “public option” had something vaguely to do with the issue of health care, while 11 percent thought it had to do with either banking regulation, unemployment, or energy policy — and 33 percent wouldn’t even wager a guess. What this tells me is that for a good chunk of the population, polling on the issue will largely depend on how the question is asked, because if only 56 percent know it has something to do with health care, it’s probably even a smaller portion of the public that really understands what it’s all about.
Klein thinks the results “will be politically useful” for public option backers, but emphasizes that they don’t suggest “a groundswell of support.”
And Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey has his eye on a different poll, which shows support for a health overhaul is dropping:
After the CBO gave the Baucus summary a preliminary score of being deficit-neutral, the Obama administration hoped for a reversal in widespread opposition to the ObamaCare overhaul. Rasmussen’s latest poll of likely voters shows the opposite has happened. Opposition has firmed up at 54%, while support has dropped four points over the last two weeks.
The Washington Post poll clocks support at 48%, while The Rasmussen poll has tended to show lower support throughout reform efforts.
