Another Incoherent Health-Care Poll in the New York Times [John R. Graham]
I can’t blame the New York Times reporters for spinning their latest poll on health care in favor of a federal government take-over. After all, they had to back up a Sunday editorial endorsing the idea, and feed Paul Krugman’s column today as well. But even so, blaring the headline “Wide Support for Government Run Health” goes beyond the pale.
The New York Times poll reported that 72% of a sample of “randomly” chosen respondents (of whom 48% had voted for Obama and only 25% for McCain last November, question #100), said they’d approve of the federal government giving everyone the option of enrolling in a Medicare-like program. Case closed? Not at all.
Comparing this month’s results with those from 1993, only 57% are willing to see their taxes go up to fund the “public option,” versus 61% back in the days of HillaryCare (#59). And of that shrunken number of enthusiastic taxpayers, only 43% would be willing to see their taxes go up by even $500, a ridiculously small amount. Let’s say that there are 100 million taxpaying households in the U.S.: $500 would raise $50 billion, which is about 2% of the nation’s health-care tab. Every serious analyst recognizes that “covering all Americans” to the standard the insured enjoy today would cost a multiple of that amount. (See the Congressional Budget Office’s devastating reckoning of the plans coming out its own employer.)
Most health-care polls demonstrate an incoherence that is impossible to reconcile, and this one is no different. Although 72% support an optional “Medicare for all”, 63% figure that it would make the quality of their own health care worse (#64) and 65% that it would hurt the economy (#63). We simply cannot take these results seriously.
Other results suggest that preference for a politically managed health system has dropped since 1993. Back during HillaryCare, 40% of respondents trusted the president, and 42% trusted Congress, to reform health care. Today, the figures are only 39% and 35% (#45). True, Republican politicians are trusted less than Democrats: only 18% of respondents trust Republicans to reform health care, down from 22% in 1993. The tragedy is that the high-water mark for Republicans (in this very left-leaning poll) was 1999 through 2003, when they were hitting 27% to 29% approval. When they were in charge, Republicans had a chance reform the tax code to give health-care dollars back to the American people to buy health insurance that they prefer, instead of health “benefits” selected by managers in their employers’ HR departments.
That is water under the bridge, but they may get a second chance someday: The Democrats’ government take-over of health care is not a slam-dunk.
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