Poll: Most Americans Support Health Law Or Want To Make It More Progressive

[ProSense]

Poll: Most Americans Support Health Law Or Want To Make It More Progressive

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Last week, FreedomWorks president Matt Kibbe made this claim in on op-ed published on FoxNews.com. He said that repealing the health care law “is achievable because the American people clearly want and expect repeal.” Earlier this week, CNN/Opinion Research released a new poll that, at first glance, seemed to support Kibbe’s thesis. The poll found that Americans opposed the new law 50 to 43 percent (with 7 percent undecided). Yet as U.S. News & World Report’s Robert Schlesinger finds, the details of the poll results show that most Americans either support the law or oppose it because it is “not liberal enough“:

Do you oppose that legislation because you think its approach toward health care is too liberal, or because you think it is not liberal enough?”

Favor 43%

Oppose, too liberal 37%

Oppose, not liberal enough 13%

No opinion 7%

These poll results clearly fly in the face of conservative dogma that Americans fear big government and want to roll back the health care law because it involves too much government intrusion into the lives of the public. In fact, polling has consistently shown that wide majorities of Americans favor access to a public plan like Medicare at the very least, if not a Medicare-for-all health insurance system. Additionally, 77 percent of Americans support drug reimportation from Canada, a policy which did not find its way into the health care law thanks to political pressure exerted by the drug industry.

While it is clear that the recently passed law has its flaws, Americans want to see it made more progressive, not less. And conservatives will find little eagerness among the American people to repeal health care coverage for tens of millions of people and once again legalize abusive insurance company practices like denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.

The RW insists on adding the "not liberal enough" group to the "too liberal" to distort the poll results. Still, 43 percent is more than 37 percent.

[old mark]

1. It was a small start, but the pressure to do not even that much from the right and

from the corporations-insurance, drugs, etc- was and still is amazing. They are fighting for dollars...we are fighting for life.

I think we will eventually get universal coverage and single payer, but maybe not in my lifetime...


mark

[ClassWarrior]

2. So will the administration finally realize that HC critics aren't all RWingnuts?

That most of us want a stronger bill, not a weaker one?

NGU.

[drm604]

3. Matt Kibbe is full of crap, and he knows it.

Lying assclown.

[Liberal_Stalwart71]

4. Doesn't adding the word "liberal" bias the results even more?

If they broke down each component of the health care reform legislation, you'll find more and more support for strengthening it, including adding in the public option. (Coincidentially, it was a recommendation from the Bowles-Simpson Deficit Reduction Commission to add the public option back into the bill.)

The only aspect of the reform law that polls very badly is the mandate. Other than that, most Americans are convinced that reform didn't go far enough, not that it went too far.

But the fact that they included the word "liberal" biases the results of the survey, anyway. Those "favorable" numbers would probably be higher had they not included that word.

It's sad, but true.