Health Care Reform: What Do Americans Want?
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010
As they debate health care reform, politicians of both parties claim they speak for the people. Republicans in particular say they are justified in doing whatever it takes to block passage of the health care reform bill now moving through Congress, because (they say) the people are opposed to it.
Republican Senator Orin Hatch recently predicted disaster for Democrats if the health care bill is passed. “Only about 25 to 30 percent of them [Americans] are for this bill and they’re generally people who want the federal government to do everything for them,” the Senator said. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell warned Democrats they would pay a price if they by-passed Republicans entirely to pass their bill. "To ignore public opinion is not going to put the issue behind them, it’s going to put the issue before them," McConnell said.
Health care reform is a vital issue to all Americans, including seniors on Medicare and people suffering devastating diseases such as mesothelioma. There’s a lot of anxiety about what will happen to the health care people are receiving now if health care reform is passed.
Are the Republicans right, that people don’t want the Democratic Party reforms? If you look at polls, the picture isn’t so clear. Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Research Center for the People & The Press, told Reuters that "Largely, people say they oppose the proposals they’ve heard about. But when we ask them what do they want Congress and the president to do, most say don’t give up, they want something."
It is true that, over the past several months, in most (not all) public opinion polls more people than not say they oppose the bills favored by congressional Democrats and President Obama. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation poll that found Americans were evenly split for and against the Democrats’ bill. However, that same poll found that when people were asked about individual provisions of the bill, they more often than not approved.
Statistician Nate Silver thinks much of the opposition to the bill is based on misinformation. I agree, and I think that Democrats will hurt themselves much more if they don’t pass the bill than if they do pass it. Once the bill has passed, and people realize their employee benefit insurance won’t change, and there aren’t tanks in the streets, and death panel squads don’t come and haul Grandma away to the Soylent Green factory, I think much of the opposition will fade away.
And when seniors learn the reform bill closes the Medicare Part D coverage gap — the so-called “doughnut hole” — they are likely to become enthusiastic supporters.
— Barbara O’Brien
