public opinion on health care

The big news from yesterday is that the Senate health care plan will now be made into law after getting enough votes in the House. This bill is not perfect by any means, but it is a move in the right direction. Insurance companies will no longer be permitted to deny coverage to kids because of pre-existing conditions or drop coverage for people who get too sick. It also allows to parents to keep their kids on their insurance plan until the age of 26 and fines companies for not offering insurance to their employees.

Republicans have been doing everything in their power to convince everyone that this plan is an evil communist/nazi plan that will kill your grandma and destroy America. They have also repeated that this bill is extremely unpopular and sometimes offer public opinion polls as proof. Most of the time these polls are taken out of context and ignore important details important in really understanding public opinion.

Take a look at one conservative's explanation of the unpopularity of the health care bill:

A new CNN Opinion Research poll, conducted over the weekend as the House debated Obamacare, finds that 59 percent of Americans now stand opposed to the health care legislation in Congress. Just 39 percent of the poll’s 1,030 respondents said they favored the bill.

This CNN Research Opinion poll is given as proof that Democrats are in trouble and that Republicans will takeover in the midterm election because the majority are on their side. What they fail to mention is why the 59% of respondents oppose this bill. It turns out a good portion of those individuals interviewed oppose the bill because they think it is not liberal enough (13%). So in reality, only 43% oppose the bill because they believe it is too liberal while 52% either support the bill or think it should be more liberal. Hardly the picture that is portrayed by the right.

Similar conclusions can be made from the poll regarding public perception on how effective this bill will be. 61% think this bill will be beneficial for themselves or for other families while 37% think it will not help anyone. The only question that really supports the Republican point of view is that 70% think the deficit will increase. However, this question does not distinguish between short- and long- term deficits so its hard to know whether some respondents actually felt that it would temporarily increase the deficit but reduce the deficit ($130 billion in 10 years and $1.2 trillion in the decade after that according to the CBO) in the long run.