This may come as a shock to many pollsters and much of the press corps, but public opinion is a little more complicated than randomly calling 1,000 Americans, asking them a dubiously worded question about a complex political issue, and reporting the aggregate results.

Fortunately, at least one prominent assayer of public opinion has taken a good look at this state of affairs and is screaming, “Pollster, heal thyself!” Scott Rasmussen looks at America’s dire fiscal predicament through the lens of polling, and does so based on a simple, neglected insight: Polling voters about broad political sentiments is very different from polling them about specific policy solutions. Sure, voters say they’re in favor of more spending on transportation infrastructure; but ask them whether taxpayers should continue, say, subsidizing Amtrak and a large majority is opposed.

In The People’s Money, Rasmussen takes a look at survey data on competing solutions to our fiscal crisis. With respect to Medicare, for example, he kicks the tires on various proposals: shoring up the trust fund, raising the payroll tax, allowing the purchase of health insurance across state lines. In the end, Rasmussen finds that, contra Obamacare, voters’ preferred Medicare solutions have certain commonalities: They “embrace the idea of competition: competition among states and competition among insurance companies.” And “the solution is to shift power away from politicians and bureaucrats so that individuals can have more control over their own lives.”