Majority Support for Public Option in Health Care Reform
Aug 26th, 2009 by nick
Based on media coverage of town hall meetings and the rest of the health care “debate”, you’d think that most Americans are against a government-run insurance option in health care reform. But it turns out that’s not the case.
As Nate Silver points out, it’s been surprisingly difficult to accurately gauge public opinion on this topic. The reason, according to Silver, is that many polls seem to be having a hard time phrasing their questions about health care reform correctly. For example, some polls fail to explain that the “public option” is an option for government-run insurance, not government-run health care itself. This problem is probably exacerbated by the misinformation about health care reform propagated by Fox News and its ilk.
However, there are two recent polls that, according to Silver, get it right. The first is the Quinnipiac poll from August 5, in which the crucial question (number 23) was, “Do you support or oppose giving people the option of being covered by a government health insurance plan that would compete with private plans?” The results show 62% support and 32% opposed. Note that there was majority support for the public option across all demographics analyzed except for Republicans. But even Republicans had 40% in favor.
The second recent poll that Silver considers to have accurately phrased questions was from Time/SRBI. This poll asked, “Would you favor or oppose a healthcare bill that creates a government sponsored public health insurance option to compete with private health insurance plans?” And the results were similar to the Quinnipiac poll results, showing 56% support for the public option and 36% opposition.
Based on these numbers, it appears that the opponents of health care reform making noise at town hall meetings are really just a vocal minority. When people are given a correct description of the actual public option, without all the hyperbolic screaming about Socialism and such, they actually favor it.
[…] polls continue the trend I wrote about last week, in showing that a majority of Americans support, “a health insurance plan […]