Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (10588)	10/20/2009 4:30:50 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

Other polls show quite different results, this is apparently one of those questions where, for many, how you word the question determines the answer. In addition to the way the question is asked, the methodology of the poll is important. For example several months back when a question was asked about giving the public the option to join a Medicare like program 72% supported the idea, but it turns out that 48% of the members of the group had voted for Obama and only 25% for McCain, almost 2 to 1, when the actual difference was more like 1.15 to 1. Message 25732929 For examples of how different questions, selection issues, and/or other aspects of methodology have given widely differing results when polling on this question see the picture linked to below (embedding doesn't work for it, so I just provide the link) 4.bp.blogspot.com Edit - But the poll apparently uses a similar group, and asks the same question as previous polls by the same organization, and support for the public option is up from the last poll. I don't think the selection or methodology is so faulty as to make the change meaningless if its large enough to be significant, considering the question is the same. But I'm not sure if the change from the last one is statistically significant, and even if it is you get "support is up", more than "support is strong".

To: Road Walker who wrote (10588)	10/20/2009 4:45:13 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

WaPo Poll: Americans Still Oppose Obamacare The Washington Post published a poll today finding that Americans oppose the Obama administration’s health care plan 48% to 45%. But the headline above, is not the headline the Post ran with. Instead they went with this: Public Option Gains Support: Clear Majority Now Backs Plan. This headline is fundamentally misleading. By claiming that a “majority now backs plan” the Post makes it seem like there was some point in time when their polling suggested otherwise. That is simply not true. Looking at the poll results over the past six months, the Post found that a high of 62% of Americans supported the plan in June, a low of 52% in August and 55% just last month. And this month the percentage of Americans supporting the public plan skyrocketed from that 55 all the way to … 57%. That’s right: a whole 2% point rise in support of the public option and the Post spun it as “rebounded” support. And isn’t that 57% in support of the public option 26 points fewer than the 83% support that the Employee Benefits Research Institute (EBRI) found? It is also 19 points lower than 76% support NBC News found and 16 points lower than 73% support Lake Research found. On the other end of the spectrum Rasmussen found that only 35% of Americans supported creating a government run insurance company. The reality is that millions of Americans just do not know what the public option even is. According to Pew, just 56% of Americans even know it has anything to do with health care (banking and the environment were the other options given). Furthermore, what the public option would actually do varies greatly on how it would be structured. As analysis from both the Lewin Group and the Congressional Budget Office has confirmed, the number of Americans forced out of their current health insurance and into a government run program depends greatly on how the public option is structured. Right now, Speaker Nancy Pelosi is pushing a version of the public option that, by tying premium levels for the new plan within 5% of Medicare, could nudge 83.4 million Americans onto the public plan. If poll respondents were made aware of this little fact, we doubt anywhere near a majority would support it. blog.heritage.org