Democratic advocates of a government run health insurance option are touting a New York Times poll released over the weekend as more evidence of public support for their pet idea.
In a front page article on Saturday, the paper blared this news based on its new survey:
Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.
With this kind of support, why wait? Impatience with American policymakers spread to the U.K., where experts like this say it's time for some "headbanging" on healthcare.
Just do it!
But there's a pesky little problem. Seems that when you ask a poll question that only touts the benefits of a public policy change (like creating a government-run health care option) you get one answer. But when it's posed in a little different way, the results shift a lot. Case in point. There is far less support for the government run plan when pollsters explain the positives and the negatives in a more fairly worded poll question.
This health care survey, released by Resurgent Republic (full disclosure, I am on the group's academic advisory board), does a much better job of laying out both sides of the argument on the government plan option, as well as a host of other health policy questions.
A recent Kaiser poll finds a similar type of shift in attitude toward a government run insurance plan when new information is introduced.
The bottom line: Americans support many of the goals of reforming "the system," but don't want the government to mess with their own health care. Covering more people sounds good in theory, as long as it doesn't mean raising taxes, increasing the deficit, and changing what people already have. This is all a prescription for a lot of volatility in polling on reforming the health care system.
A closer analysis of the NYT's poll sample by Resurgent Republic's Whit Ayres also reveals this shocker: A significant Democratic bias. The poll asked respondents who they voted for in the 2008 election. The results in the Times survey: A 29 point margin for Barack Obama over John McCain. As pollsters we always see a drift toward the winner in recalled responses to the "how did you vote" question. But a 29-point "drift" is more like a big-time Democratic bias in these results - another reason why an already the Times's already prejudiced question on the government run plan tilts heavily in the pro-Democratic direction.
