On Aug 24, 2009, at 8:58 PM, Michael Pollak wrote:
> If only something medicare-like were on offer! Suggests single
> payer -- which is what medicare-like means -- really is more popular
> than any public option (which are nothing like medicare in any way).
I first started looking at health care polls in the early 1990s. Even then, they were extremely sensitive to wording an context. For example, if you started by asking people about their own situation, then moved onto policy, you'd get responses much friendlier to the status quo than if you started by asking general policy questions. The ABC writeup confirms this - adding the words "like Medicare" improves the public option's standing by 10-15 points, but saying "government run" lowers it. It's clear that no one really understands any of this stuff.
Doug