Via Rasmussen: 32% Favor Single-Payer Health Care, 57% Oppose
Thirty-two percent (32%) of voters nationwide favor a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% are opposed to a single-payer plan.
Hardly a shock, as we know from other polling that the vast majority of Americans are happy with their current health insurance (indeed the number in favor is perhaps higher than one might have expected). Of course, the usefulness of these numbers are limited, as there is no serious proposal for a single-payer system. As such, PowerLine, John Hawkins and Don Suber, et al. are reading far, far too much into these numbers.
I will stipulate that the numbers for health care reform that I have seen are certainly problematic for Obama and the Democrats to this point (and at least in part for reasons I noted on Sunday).
However, in regards to what the Rasmussen poll tells us (which isn’t very much, I would argue), this is some basic, basic social science. First, there is the fact noted above that there is no proposal for a single-payer system (e.g., like the Canadian system). So if we assume that all the respondents even know a) what a single-payer system is, and b) know that the current policy debate in the US has nothing to do with a single-payer system, this poll would only tell us what we already know: that there is no support for such a system in the US. It is, of course, more likely, that some substantial number of respondents had varying definitions of the term “single-payer” meaning that we really don’t know much about what these numbers mean.
As I am sure I have noted before, public opinion polling is mostly useful under two basic conditions: when there is a clear choice regarding the issue being polled and when public information in the target population is high. Neither of those factor exist in regards to this poll. As such, it really isn’t especially useful.
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August 11th, 2009 at 9:59 am
With the very important, already noted, caveat about what “single payer” means to respondents, I am actually shocked that nearly a third are in favor. This is a model that is treated like a pariah by our Powers That Be, and yet a third say they want it.
(On the importance of information in the polled population, it is noteworthy that single payer polled very high in a survey of medical professionals some months ago. It was published in a medical journal, but I did not keep the citation. Doctors and nurses know that single payer gives them and their patients more freedom than any model under consideration, including the status quo.)
August 11th, 2009 at 10:09 am
…this poll would only tell us what we already know: that there is no support for such a system in the US.
Actually, with your caveats in mind, it tells us that almost 1 out of every 3 US citizens support a single-payer system. That’s a lot higher than most people would suspect. Are 1/3 of our representatives in favor? Are 1/3 of the voices we hear on television news in favor?
It’s certainly higher than the 1/9 who believe Barack Obama was born outside the US. At one point a few years ago, 1/3 would have been more than the number of Americans opposed to the Iraq war.
If it’s true 1/3 of the US believes in single-payer healthcare, then that’s the voice being silenced in this debate. If there is an attempt to find the ideological center on the healthcare debate, then knowing that 1/3 of the US stands in favor of full government control is rather important and completely under-covered by the media.
August 11th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I started my comment before MSS commented. Nice overlap though
August 11th, 2009 at 12:22 pm
The real issue in polling is that the Democrats find themselves in the unusual position of arguing the cerebral over the visceral.
Proponents can split an entire head full of hair concerning how “government mandates” or “public option” isn’t necessarily government run healthcare. But the words “government healthcare” trump a discussion on the minutia of the differences. It’s more memorable and it conveys what’s needed. “Government healthcare” conveys a much more visceral message than a Lincoln-Douglas style opening on the differences of the various depths of government involvement.
The same thing happened back in the immigration debate (though that didn’t break down as closely on Rep-Dem lines). A good case could be made that immigration liberalization was a good thing but a shout of AMNESTY! from the back of the room was more convincing than a 5 minute dissertation on econometric models of labor productivity enhancements. It also happened when the Democrats killed social security reform with the word PRIVATIZATION, and various times the CUT MEDICARE meme has been trotted out.
I think that the death panel comment was another move in that direction. Folks here won’t believe it, but there’s a good swathe of the electorate that aren’t contemptible of Sarah Palin. Most people are like their representatives, they won’t be reading the healthcare bill and will be depending on what they hear about what’s going on. And DEATH PANEL is a lot easier to understand than end of planning, measuring value of life, and the worth of the remaining years.
August 11th, 2009 at 12:43 pm
Buckland,
There is little doubt that politics is often driven very much by visceral reactions to inaccurate (often deliberately misleading) sloganeering. It is certainly true that that is what will often determine outcomes, to be sure.
However, that doesn’t make it right, good or desirable for it to be that way. Further, we are talking about far more than minutia or hair-splitting here.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
Your assessment is generally right–although it is important to remember Rasmussen has strong ties to the GOP, serving as a Bush pollster.
Time and ABT/SRBI actually did a poll a couple of weeks ago that found 47% in favor of “single payer.”
The discrepancies suggest that polling is inherently unreliable–although Rasmussen’s background and the fact that his numbers are such outliers makes me take his findings with a grain of salt.
http://www.srbi.com/MostAmericansEagerforHealthcareReform.html
FYI: The Time poll finds 56% in favor of a public option.
August 11th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
It is quite fair to note Rasmussen’s GOP ties.
Regardless, I am going to remain skeptical of most polling on this subject until we are far closer to an actual program than we are right now.
August 11th, 2009 at 3:13 pm
Steve,
I’d think you better than posting regarding a Rasmussen poll, which is an outlier in the best of times. You don’t mention other polls that show americans clearly favor a massive overhaul of the health insurance paradigm we have in the U.S.
I’d also note, just for posterity’s sake, that the people who least favor health insurance reform are the ones who have employer-provided health care. Let’s see them lose their job and whether that changes their tune.
August 11th, 2009 at 5:33 pm
Really I was more blogging about the response to the Rasmussen poll (click through to Surber or Powerline to see what I mean) than I was about the poll itself.
August 11th, 2009 at 6:12 pm
I think you buried the lede on that one, then. This poll is useLESS in terms of gauging anything. Period. Rasmussen deserves to be shunned as a right-wing hack polling operation. The only proper response to a Rasmussen poll is to demand that they be outed for the liars they are and, if possible, closed down for their damage to the democratic process.
Seriously, nobody is getting near single-payer in this health care reform go-around. Why anyone is polling on this (or blogging about that polling) is beyond me.
August 11th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
boz, at #2 single-payaer is not “full government control.” Health-care remains private and competitive in Canada and other single-payer systems. (Single-payer does not refer to those systems in which doctors are employed by the state, which is rather different and has no US constituency that I know of.)
Under single-payer only the payer is public. Moreover, I would not conflate “public” necessarily with “government control.” The UK government does not control the BBC, for example, yet the BBC is surely “public.” (The institutional design details matter a lot, and no, I am not claiming that our surprising and ignored 1/3 gets these subtleties, only that smart commentators like boz should not make such conflations.)
And, Ratoe, yes, I thought I had seen higher numbers mentioned from other polls, which of course is all the more remarkable (in the sense, and with the caveats, that I mentioned in #1 and boz in #2). The number in the healthcare professionals poll was a lot higher: those who deliver the health-care understand its advantages.
August 12th, 2009 at 7:13 am
Appreciate the clarification.