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Feb 17 2010

Does The Public Want A Public Option – No It Does Not.

Posted by G.J. Merits in Health Care, tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

This has always bothered me and I never have really seen any good follow up along the lines of the analysis below. Right now the public option polls good – due to how the question is asked. When asked in a way that more honestly represents the real meaning of “public option”, its popularity tanks. Right now there are plenty of folks in the blogosphere, Senators, and Representatives making overtures to bringing back the “popular” public option, and they often quote some of the numbers from the article. When are conservatives going to get on message and push additional polls or at least message out the information provided in the linked article? I am tired of hearing about how popular the public option is when it is most definitively not popular. I don’t doubt that polling data for the public option and how well it is received is going to be highlighted at the upcoming summit. I hope the Republicans have their wits about them and draw attention to the skewed polling techniques that show how popular a very unpopular public option is.

Let’s take a look at Rasmussen. He has offered a series of really interesting questions on health care. First, he gives a basic version of the question that ABC News/WaPo, CBS News/NY Times, Marist, and CNN asked:

Would you favor or oppose the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option that people could choose instead of a private health insurance plan?

That gets strong approval, as per usual when people hear words like “choose,” “compete,” and “option.”

Then Rasmussen asks this follow up:

Suppose that the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option encouraged companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their workers. Workers would then be covered by the government option. Would you favor or oppose the creation of a government-sponsored non-profit health insurance option if it encouraged companies to drop private health insurance coverage for their workers?

What happens when this Republican argument is substituted for the Democratic argument? Support for the public option plummets dramatically. Nearly 3/5ths of all respondents voiced opposition to the public option when it was phrased in this way.

So next time you hear a liberal spew out the “pubic option polls well” talking point, give them a dose of something they are not too familiar with – inconvenient facts.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 10:49 am and is filed under Health Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

6 Responses to “Does The Public Want A Public Option – No It Does Not.”
  1. Angus says:
    02/17/2010 at 1:14 pm

    If it is possible to get a desired polling result by changing the phrasing of the poll question, then it follows that any poll result by any political group is meaningless.

    What good does it do to base an ideological argument on an admittedly biased process? How do you argue for the validity of polls that are manipulated in your favor without also lending some credibility to the opposition’s manipulated polls?

    Politicians quote poll results so that they can avoid an open and honest debate of their proposed legislative attempts. After all, the public can engage in a political debate with politicians but how do they argue with biased poll results without citing other biased poll results?

    Polls and the polling process are part of a rigged political game that has rules that ensure that only the politicians can win. Don’t play their games.

  2. G.J. Merits says:
    02/17/2010 at 4:59 pm

    I am not playing their games. What I am noticing is the what I call the exposure rule. The public is woefully unaware of what is meant by the “public option”. The name itself sounds quite benign – even sounds a bit nice. As most polls cast the public option as a competitor to private insurance and an aid to keep the private insurers honest and therefore drive down costs, nobody is thinking that the entity running the public option is the same entity that is running the post office, social security, drives the deficit, and spends, spends, spends. So in fairness, I think polls should state the facts. The public option should be recast as government run healthcare because that is what it is. If the question is truthful and does not have any additional leaders or qualifiers then the answers achieved will be an honest assessment of the public’s opinion. No rigging, just plain and simple questions. This one is a no-brainer as nobody can look me in the eye and state that the public option is not government run, so call it that so there is no confusion.

  3. scott says:
    02/19/2010 at 10:19 am

    The same entity that is “running the post office, social security” not to mention the US military. Why don’t you find some polls of the American people’s opinion of the post office, social security and the military? They are quite popular. Not everyone in this country has fixated ideology that the gov’t is incompetent at absoultely everything.

  4. scott says:
    02/19/2010 at 10:21 am

    Beyond on that, why don’t you ask the approval rating Medicare by folks that are ON MEDICARE? Medicare is a heck of a lot more “government run health care” than a public option would be. And how about if the public option is dropped? Is it it still “government run health care” in your mind?

  5. tbone says:
    02/19/2010 at 11:15 am

    Scott,

    You are delusional. Nobody I know likes the post office or the DMV, so I don’t know what planet you are from. Medicare is insolvent and social security is now drawing out more than it is taking in. The only thing you got right is the military and that is because it is “staffed” by men and women who are profiles in leadership and courage. I don’t know about you, but when I go to to the DMV or the post office, I am not met by people I would trust my life with. Doctors are dropping Medicare patients at a record pace due to the poor reimbursement rates, the most famous being the Mayo clinic in Arizona, so yeah Medicare does suck except to those who rely on it. The problem is you can have an entitlement that people love that is unworkable. That is the problem with liberals, they are unable to see the the holes in their argument. Hand outs are great, until somebody has to actually pay for them. Idiot.

  6. The Amendment Bomb – How I Learned Not To Fear Reconciliation | Wolves of Liberty says:
    03/17/2010 at 12:59 pm

    [...] Does The Public Want A Public Option – No It Does Not Share Healthc Care, Legislation biden, bob, boehner, cantor, democrats, dove, gop, [...]

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