Are Americans fed up with health care reform?
Image by AFP/Getty Images via Daylife
Yesterday’s USA Today/Gallup poll reveals that 49% of Americans would now counsel their elected representatives to vote against heath care reform while only 44% would tell their Congressional reps to vote yes.
The numbers reveal a serious change of opinion from a poll taken just a month earlier when 51% were supportive of reform while 41% were opposed.
Why the reversal of fortune?
Some of the answers can be found in the breakdown of support on party lines. In the October poll 83% of all Democrats supported the healthcare legislation. Today, that number stands at 76%. This could be pegged to the displeasure of progressives with the anti-abortion language that made its way into the House bill and the growing belief that there will, ultimately, be no meaningful public option in a final Senate bill.
Republican support – or lack of it – hasn’t changed. 13% liked the legislation in October and 12% still do.
The real beating is coming via the Independents. In the October polls, 48% supported reform. That number is now down to 37%.
That is a problem.
So what happened? Did the Independents like the ‘idea’ of reform but sour on it as they learned the actual details?
I don’t think so.
I think the American public has tuned out. We’ve seen a little too much of the sausage making that is the legislative process and it has turned our stomachs. We don’t want to see any more.
What began as an effort to reform a seriously ill health care system that leaves too many out while costing too much to those who are in, has turned into a political ‘every man and woman for themselves’ turf war where the point of the exercise long ago fell by the wayside.
Today, the story is no longer about fixing health care – it’s about the filibuster, Sen. Judd Gregg’s expertise at using the Senate’s parliamentary rules to slow down debate and whatever Sarah Palin has to say on the subject just because we apparently can’t help ourselves when it comes to caring about what Sarah Palin has to say.
It’s no longer about whether or not Majority Leader Harry Reid can craft a meaningful bill that can pass the Senate. It’s about what impact the effort is having on Harry Reid’s tight election race back home in Nevada.
It’s not about health care — it’s all politics all the time.
While the progressives will blame the Republican scare tactics and effective stalling techniques, the GOP will blame Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama’s socialistic instincts.
I think the Independents blame everyone involved in this revolting process – and they’ve got it right.
Health care reform presented the president with his best opportunity to put his promised new style of leadership on full display. He told us that under his administration, we would get an open process led by the best and the brightest of this generation.
What we got were closed door White House meetings, ‘under the table’ deals with the biggest offenders in the health care system and a White House that still has never actually told us what they want in health care.
It’s hard to imagine a more ‘old school’ approach than the strategy employed by the Administration.
Rather than deliver on the bold approaches promised, The White House chose instead to go the route of getting along with everyone, formulating a recipe dependent upon gaining opposition support by playing the effort straight down the middle.
The strategy reminds me of a saying a friend of mine likes to use. When you stand in the middle of the road, you get run over by traffic moving in both directions.
The Republicans? Shameful. These people, elected to serve the interest of the United States, make absolutely no bones of the fact that they wish to use health care reform to destroy the President leaving the American people as the unfortunate collateral damage in their political fight.
While the red team’s behavior may be despicable almost beyond comprehension, you have to give it up to them on organization. They hang together. When a couple of the troops got out of line and looked like they might play nice with the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, the guilty were quickly brought back into the fold, pledging their fealty by telling their constituents that ideas they had previously supported were now intended to allow the government to put old folks to death.
But it’s working. Promising months of tying up the legislation with procedural and parliamentary tricks, the GOP is breaking the civic spirit of Americans, forcing them to turn away from a debate that has become painful and dull to the mainstream.
And the Democrats? Who needs Republicans to screw it up when the Democrats are doing such a good job of it on their own. If all this goes wrong, it won’t be because of the GOP, it will be the fault of the Senate Democrats who are either serving the interest of their pharmaceutical and health insurance company donors or are up for re-election and terrified of losing their job.
What’s going to happen?
Who knows? All we really know is that this will be one of only pieces published today that is even asking that question because, at the moment, nobody much cares.
The public has moved on to Tiger Woods, party crashers and Christmas and the White House has run out of time.
Obama has been forced to move on to jobs and Afghanistan before finishing the job on health care reform. And in a week where we needed the President to continue the drum beat on healthcare reform, the White House has been playing defense over whether the White House social secretary did her job at the State dinner for the Indian Prime Minister or was too busy getting her picture taken. Indeed, so important was this question that the White House actually invoked executive privilege to keep the social secretary from appearing before Congress.
Executive privilege for the social secretary? Really? This is what is replacing the most important legislation in this country in generations on the front pages and TV news programs?
I hope my health insurance is paid up because I think I’m going to be sick.
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Hello,
I think people are just sick to death of hearing about health care reform. It is like a bad TV show that just won’t get canceled (think “Family Guy”). The same dull characters in the same stall, repetitive episodes, saying the same taglines over and over again. I am sick to death of endless discussion and I am in favor of health care reform.
I think that’s where everyone is getting too. It’s becoming all too clear that it has been very badly managed.
In response to another comment. See in context »Honestly, and not to bring more cynicism to the table, even though it is hard to be anything but cynical in modern day America, this situation we are finding ourselves in with HC reform seems to just be indicative of the trend of politics here in the States to not really do anything for the vast majority of the population. For six of the past nine years any sort of legislation that could fork over millions, sometimes billions, in taxpayer money to companies that did nothing for the public to deserve it was rammed through Congress like a sucker punch to the gut. And anything even slightly progressive was either neutered or put into committee to die or finally passed once it had enough kickbacks in it. And now a group that seemed eager to be representative of the people are either showing their true colors by trying to help their “constituents” – i.e. those who donated thousands their campaigns – more than those that voted for them, or they are just showing the incompetence that we come to expect from elected officials. Really, we are just at a turning point here as a country and a people. Are we going to stand for this, and kindly be blinded by the “Reality TV Moment of the Week”, this time in the form of Tiger Woods and his infidelities, or are we finally going to hold these people who are supposed to have our interests in mind as they collect their taxpayer paid salaries and wonderful benefits as they put more energy into bank bailouts than laws to benefit the common man, like Health Care Reform, or overdue investment into Education and so on?
Every generation, there seems to be a new fight on the hands of the public at large; this one seems to be a fight against corporate and political greed and against our own apathy. Sadly, this is a war we brought on ourselves.
In response to another comment. See in context »It did not take long before we were watching healthcare become a huge corporate giveaway to insurance companies while a robust public option became another pipe dream. Every election cycle we the people are promised the same reforms that never materialize in Congress. We keep electing the same idiots over and over.
HR 676, the simplest and most implementable plan, was immediately taken off the table because rather than help our population and industries become more competitive we have to feed the greed of a few.
In response to another comment. See in context »What are they gonna do after they find out they are going to jail…if they don’t sign up for Obamacare…..
I would call it “health care reform” when it is the white house and congress hijacking the entire health care system of the United States….wander if they will make it illegal for doctors to have cash patients as Hillarycare had proposed
In response to another comment. See in context »Are Americans fed up with health care reform? I know I am.
It’s becoming sickeningly obvious that when the Republicans and Blue Dogs are done with this bill, it will reform nothing, in fact it will somehow INCREASE health care costs, make the health insurance companies significantly richer, and it will extend coverage to exactly two uninsured Americans, a farmer in Nebraska and a waitress in Maine, both of whom will be invited to the signing ceremony in the White House.
We’re fed up with Congress. They (and the big businesses they are beholden to) are simply the greediest, most selfish people on the planet. We need real progressives to take the reigns of Washington and steer us out of this mess.
I could not agree more. Everyone I know understands the only outcome will make the rich(insurers & pharma) richer and the rest of us will pay for it. Sounds strangely like the financial reform legislation. 2010 & 2012 will be throw all the bums out of Congress & the White House- you too GOP, don’t start smiling at the chaos yet; you will be blamed too.
I’d love to know what “independent” means in all the polls that get thrown around. The MSM usually defines independents as being in the “middle” – stuck somewhere in between Democrats and Republicans.
I’d call myself an independent if a pollster asked me, even though I’m well to the left of the Democratic Party. Shouldn’t polls at least identify people on some kind of ideological scale rather than simply D or R with everyone else labeled “I”? Wouldn’t we het a better idea of what these independents think and what the numbers really mean?
I think if you start to break out different sides of Independent it can get pretty unwieldy. As it stands, it means people who do not identify themselves as dems. or repubs. They can certainly be in the ‘middle’ ‘left’ or ‘right’.
In response to another comment. See in context »Exactly my point – an “I” can be left, right, or middle, thus leaving the designation meaningless when trying to determine what it is they want. And the pollsters’ failure to further define the “I”s allows most media outlets to define it for themselves without any real knowledge of what it means.
In response to another comment. See in context »Makes elections 2010 all the more intriguing. It will be interesting to find out what the answer to your question is then.
In response to another comment. See in context »The corruption in our two party system has been evident for years. It no longer serves we the people. As a registered Independent voter, I am tired of the carefully chosen politicians that are offered up for the vote. They are all corporate shills with the exception of a very few like Kucinich, Grayson, Sanders and Paul. At least they have the moral fortitude to speak from their conscience for the people.
The only option to reverse this trend of implosion is to institute public financing for elections. We should take some lessons from the Europeans and limit the election cycle to 8 weeks instead living two year melodramas to elect a President. An eight week cycle would eliminate an enormous amount of waste and publicly financed elections would include a lot of new voices from parties that have typically been pushed to the side by the media.
All eligible candidates (eligibility determined by signatures collected to be on the ballot) would have access to debate instead of being chosen by the media.
Just think what will happen to the polls if no meaningful reform is passed?
I heard on NPR — true?! — that individually purchased health insurance would likely go up about 30 percent if this is passed. We were quoted, should my partner lose his job, $1,440 — yes, for two healthy adults, no kids — a month to replace it.
Are you kidding? Making that obscene amount — more than our mortgage payment — even MORE expensive? I’m desperate to see everyone get affordable health insurance but I despair of it ever happening. Certainly as someone who’s lived in Canada, England and France where public health care for all is normal.
I’d stay tuned if I thought anything might actually happen.
It is going to go up because the insurance companies are going to take advantage of the time following passage to the time of the new programs beginning to raise their rates. On average, insurance premiums go up about 7% a year. Since the legislation would not kick in until 2014, the increases will be roughly 30% – may be a little more or less as the annual increases have only been 5% for the past couple years, between now and when the bills kick in.
In response to another comment. See in context »In somewhat of an echo, the problem is not that people are fed up with health care reform, it’s that we are fed up with the LACK of reform. As you noted Rick, the longer this process takes, the more watered down the bill becomes, the less the corporate industry will needs to change, the less the people get in return for any effort put in, the more conservative agendas (poster ex: Stupak ammendment)have a chance to be added in as some kind of “across the aisle” gesture that defies the notion of reform.
At this point, what “we the people” have left as influence is inundating our senators with the fact that we want something progressive, not the re-formation of what already exists. Call the conservatives, too, so they’ll hear from the other side. Time and time again, I hear GOP reps say their constituents don’t want “Obamacare” and other silly names for this legislation. Which constituents would that be? The ones that believe the BS about killing grandma and who don’t compare how much health care costs will rise anyway vs. how much they are reported to change with a public option? (not a swipe at you Caitlin Kelly, but at the reporting of NPR, which has been sorely lacking in fact prep on this issue since at least this summer)
Probably Democratic reps hear from those pro-reform. Both parties probably hear from the crazies on the other sides, but not those who are searching for meaningful reform. I’m not sure how those of us in this position can make sure our voices are heard – especially to any effect – but phone calls are a start. Demonstrations are nice and all, but the press is choosy in coverage of such events. And storming capitol hill is much tougher now with that social secretary and secret service debacle.
The election in 2010 is gonna be 1 tough pill to swallow (oi, pun not intended). The Dems will probably take a well-deserved fall, except that the replacements will probably be worse. I’m totally on-board with election rehab, and am a big big fan of instant run-off elections as part of that action. See (http://www.fairvote.org/) fair vote and (http://www.voterownedelections.org/) voter owned elections websites. Voter owned, clean elections are something we can push for that will have a broad, positive impact on politics in this country. If you want momentum for progressive issues, you’ll want momentum for this to build.