--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> I doubt pollsters ask questions like that, but it'd
> be interesting to
> give it a try. Got $20-30,000?
Well, I would not dismiss it too lightly - he might be up to something. I think it would be worthwhile to run a poll testing popular responses to various terms and concepts in reference to health care. Perhaps 'socialized' sounds too much like 'socialist' but 'social' goes more with security.
As to your idea of the Ford Foundation running a single payer system - again, you might be up to something as well. In Europe, especially the Netherlands, nonprofits are the main "pilars" (hence the term "pillarization" in reference to the Dutch welfare system) of social safety net and health care system, which is nonetheless publicly funded http://www.jhu.edu/ccss/pubs/pdf/nether2.pdf see also Lijphart, _The politics of accomodation: pluralism and democracy in the Netherlands_ (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968).
So while the "government-run national health care system" might not sail very far in this country, that might change if the government (Congress) sets up a nonprofit (501c1) corporation (like Amtrak, for example) to manage a single payer health care system. I bet that if the issue was framed as a "single payer health care system managed by a private nonprofit governing body, and financed by private premiums and government transfers" - you would get a substantial majority supporting it.
Wojtek
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