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New Poll Finds Americans Down On Dems' Health Care Plan
Brian Beutler | October 8, 2009, 10:06AM
Pres. Barack Obama
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A new Quinnipiac poll has some mixed news for Democrats and President Obama. Though the public supports elements of Obama's health care proposal, only 40 percent approve of his health care plan, while 47 percent disapprove.
This nugget was particularly interesting:
By a 57 - 37 percent margin, voters say Congress should not approve a health care overhaul with only Democratic votes. Democrats are OK with a one-party bill 63 - 29 percent, but opposition is 88 - 9 percent from Republicans and 62 - 32 percent from independent voters.
That's in almost direct contrast to the findings of a recent Research 2000 poll, commissioned by Daily Kos. It asked "Which of the following scenarios do you prefer/ do you prefer? (ROTATED): Getting a health care bill with the choice of a strong public health insurance option to compete with private insurance plans that's supported only by Democrats in Congress, OR Getting a health care bill with no public option that has the support of Democrats and a handful of Republicans?"
When put that way, it turns out the public is perfectly fine with partisanship: 52-39, with nine percent undecided.
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mans_best_friend
October 8, 2009 10:15 AM
Here's the real relevant poll question:
If the Democrats pass health care reform with only Democratic votes, will you refuse the coverage?
The answer, obviously, is no. After all the dust settles, people will be very happy with the result, regardless of what they say now.
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Xantar
October 8, 2009 10:28 AM in reply to mans_best_friend
Exactly. And the follow-up question: if health care reform passes with no Republican support, do you want the governor of your state to opt out?
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mans_best_friend
October 8, 2009 10:52 AM in reply to Xantar
No governor that wants to see re-election will ever opt out.
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fbacon2
October 8, 2009 11:59 AM in reply to mans_best_friend
Did anyone see the actual wording of the Q poll questions? If they're only focusing on the vote composition, of course the split will come down this way. Bipartisanship is a popular concept, especially among independents and Republicans who know they stand to lose. If it's a trade-off question, with bipartisanship and a bad bill on one side, and partisanship and a good bill on the other, I'd expect the result to track with Research 2K.
The overall numbers on approval for Obama's plan would also be expected if they linked it to Obama himself. My memory was that results were higher for questions on the policy and lower when things were called "Obama's plan" or worse, "Pelosi's plan." Again, I'd need to see the questions (not linked), but the Q poll otherwise seems like an outlier.
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fbacon2
October 8, 2009 12:31 PM in reply to fbacon2
I should also note the politics of polls like this being released right now: they're being used by fabricators like Karl Rove and other opponents of reform like Eric Cantor to pretend that health care reform is unpopular.
Fortunately, the opponents have just been pounded this week, and their message is ringing hollow. The bulk of polling shows reform to be gaining momentum. Obama is gaining in the polls. Bob Dole is reading the writing and endorsing the plan at exactly the right moment (almost like Colin Powell's endorsement in the election.) CBO scores Baucus' bill as a deficit reducer, even under the most strenuous and onerous criteria that Kent Conrad laid out.
And now the public option looks to be transforming into an opt-out compromise that might win votes in the Senate.
Opponents are panicking right about now.
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cmpnwtr
October 8, 2009 10:27 AM
I trust the Kaiser Family Foundation's polling much more on this.
http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/posr092909nr.cfm
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Moose49
October 8, 2009 10:41 AM
In the long run, none of this matters. If Congress passes a health care reform bill that gives everyone access to affordable, quality care and ends insurance company abuses, people will be happy and won't care how it passed. Senators and representatives who voted for it will be more likely to be reelected.
However, if legislation is enacted that requires people to buy insurance they can't afford and allows the insurance industry to continue ripping people off, stiffing customers on claims and driving people with high medical costs into bankruptcy, people will be pissed off and, similarly, won't care how it passed. Senators and representatives who voted for it will be less likely to be reelected.
In other words, good policy and good politics are one and the same here. It's process that's bullshit.
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The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
October 8, 2009 11:11 AM in reply to Moose49
". . . continue ripping people off, stiffing customers on claims and driving people with high medical costs into bankruptcy . . ."
That's a bit of a strawman, isn't it? I mean, even the worst bill (i.e., this one) puts an end to the pre-existing condition and recission scams that the insurance companies spend tens of millions running.
By biggest political concern is actually one raised today by (sound of me spitting on ground) Rove. If the legislation that ultimately passes frontloads the nasty tasting bits and doesn't deliver any tangible benefits to most people until after 2012, the Democrats are going to be get hosed in the midterms. Some of the worst aspects of the Baucus bill don't relate to the public option but to that problem.
Ending the preexisting coverage/claim denial/recission scams isn't going to be a "tangible benefit" to most people because, though it's not something we talk about a lot here, most people's experience with their insurance comany is that their claims are honored and paid. Even though the reason for might be that most people don't have something sufficiently expensive wrong enough to make it cost effective to screw them, that experience creates an expectation that their own insurere will play straight when the worst happens. Telling people they're safe from something that they don't believe (and don't want to believe) can happen to them isn't going to be seen as a benefit. (And, unfortunately, neither is covering the uninsured unless you're one of them.)
What will be seen as a benefit is not having to worry about losing health coverage if you quit or lose your job. Policy wonking and moralizing aside, that's the bottom line in rawly, grossly political terms. If they pass a bill that doesn't deliver that from day one, by whatever means, we're looking at a Republican Congress in 2011.
And given that the Republican Party is no longer a political party but has, instead, degenerated into a special interest group for the paranoid psychotics, that is one horrifying prospect.
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fbacon2
October 8, 2009 11:53 AM in reply to The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
Isn't that the reason why Obama promoted McCain's catastrophic coverage idea in his joint session speech? The idea was to start putting forward "deliverables" right away. I think they're aware of this problem. The question then is how much can they realistically produce when new programs and the full exchange doesn't get set up for years down the line because of budgetary wrangling.
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unabogie
October 8, 2009 11:58 AM in reply to The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
I'm living this right now, and I never thought I would be. Four months ago, my wife had surgery on my plan. I'm on a group plan through my company which has 4 employees. Yesterday, Cal-Choice found a loophole and dropped our whole company's coverage, so now 3 families are out of health coverage and my wife has a pre-existing condition which means we may not be able to afford whatever crappy plan we can find for her.
We've been insured by the same plan for five years.
Funny that as soon as one of us needed a big claim to be paid, they dropped us, but I'm sure that was just a coincidence.
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Moose49
October 8, 2009 12:21 PM in reply to The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
That's a fair criticism in most respects, though I still don't know if any of the health care reform bills will stop insurance companies from routinely denying claims for specious reasons other than pre-existing conditions (e.g., definitions of "medically necessary," going out-of-network, etc.) or prohibiting companies from imposing claim denial quotas on their claims adjusters/processors.
And I totally agree with you about the imperative of adjusting these bills to put more of the obvious benefits on the front end. Indeed, under the nightmare scenario you've described, it would even be plausible for a GOP-controlled Congress to repeal reform or systematically undermine it.
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Cal Gal
October 8, 2009 1:47 PM in reply to Moose49
It's also important that the public option -- opt-in, opt-out, whatever -- get into effect right away, before the election next year, so people can really vote on the basis of the reform that is enacted.
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Redshift
October 8, 2009 10:43 AM
Or alternatively, the public likes bipartisanship when you don't tell them that it costs them anything.
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Stroszek
October 8, 2009 10:51 AM
The recent Gallup also contradicts this poll.
Evidently, there's really no consistent position when it comes to polling these nitty-gritty questions about vague plans and legislative strategies.
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The Commenter Formerly Known as NCSteve
October 8, 2009 11:18 AM in reply to Stroszek
It's a textbook case study on why issue polling is hard. Phrasing of the quesitn always matters. How you phrase candiate preference in an election cycel can actually affect the result. And on issues, you're trying to capture a much more complex opinion dynamic than the simple yes/no this one/that one dichotomies presented in an election poll. You can't do more than swirl them all around in your mouth and get a general flavor for where things are.
And where they are is that most people are scared of change of any kind all the time, but especially in bad economic times, have internalized a fear of deficits and the national debt even though they don't know the difference between the two, and will usually give the answer that sounds most civic-minded to them if they don't really have sufficient information to answer knowledgably.
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neesy08
October 8, 2009 11:10 AM
these polls are irrelevant. as soon as the prez signs the bill into law, public opinion will jump about 6 points. and i especially do not trust quinnipac
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tinmanic
October 8, 2009 11:24 AM
I don't understand why voters would support affirmative action for political parties. Particularly Republicans -- I thought they were in favor of competition and the idea that winners get what they want and losers have to accept the consequences. Instead, the idea seems to be, "It doesn't matter if you lost the election! Everyone is special and everyone gets a say!"
Good grief.
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nanorich
October 8, 2009 12:01 PM
This is a perfect case of the "the socially acceptable" response.
You are supposed to want something to be bipartisan, even tho one can assume most people could give a rat's ass about bipartisanship.
The wording and order of the question makes a difference, too.
Most people aren't following the debate closely enough to know that the public option isn't single payer, forget about the fact that the Republicans aren't actually negotiating.
Nobody cares if it is bipartisan or not.
Except the asshole who framed the question to get the desired bipartisan response.
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jtbear60
October 8, 2009 12:43 PM in reply to nanorich
Getting there. How about this?
Of course everyone WANTS a bipartisan bill, (can't we all just get along?), while the truth is that those republican elected representatives (it is to laugh) have zero interest in anything, "We The People" have to say about it.
They cannot stop playing party politics long enough to vote against gang rape for God's sake!
Wake up and smell the coffee, these animals are bought and paid for by big business. They are corporatist to the bone.
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fkaZk0sm0
October 8, 2009 12:17 PM
how exactly the question is worded might not bear this out but it seems possible to me that the real take away is that independents think republicans need to get on board (rather than the implied take away that dems shouldn't pass anything unless republicans are on board).
one of the keys might be whehter the question is phrased "should congress..." as opposed to "should democrats..."
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Chesire111
October 8, 2009 12:47 PM
I think this, and other polls deonstrating a preference for bipartisan health reform are being widely misinterpreted. Considering what other polls have shown about support for reform and for a robust public option, I see these results as a public indictment not of the Dems but of the Republicans. Expressing a desire for bipartisanship doesn't automatically mean the public wishes the Dems would make concessions to the Republicans. It could mean that the public thinks the Republicans are being too partisan and should support health reform efforts.
This idea that the public is shaking their heads at Democratic "partisanship", while giving the Republican onstructionists a free pass would strain credulity.
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roxanne
October 8, 2009 12:50 PM
I suspect that this is why that idiot Joe Scarborough was quoting this garbage today. First, the way the question is phrased is always important and a daily tracking pole is just that. A snapshot taken daily. To prove this out, why don't they just ask people right now whether they intend to vote for a Democrat or a Republican in 2010? The reason is because it's too soon to get any real sense of where people are. Scarborough kept quoting this Quinnipiac pole this morning which has Obama's over all approval rating at just 50 but, on Monday, the Associated Press poll showed Obama's approval rating has jumped by 6 points to 56%. Something that Scarborough never mentioned. Which was why I turned the channel...just before he announced his next guest was Jeb Bush. Yes, Jeb Bush and Jethro Scarborough, the country bumpkin! Go back to Alabama with the rest of the inbreds Joe!
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AJM
October 8, 2009 2:56 PM
Um, you could get a bi-partisan plan if the Republicans voted for public option. Since the public does like the public option can we interpret this as a demand that the Republicans vote for it?
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