At the Galen Institute, we are releasing today a poll we commissioned to ask people their opinions about some of the major features of the health reform proposals before Congress.
In one of the questions, we asked specifically about the individual mandate, enforced with a $750 tax, and found that 71% of those surveyed are opposed. We’ve known all along it would be almost impossible for politicians to endorse penalties to enforce a mandate, which is why we have advocated going a different way — refundable tax credits for all, assignable to buy private insurance. Those who don’t use the credit to buy insurance would automatically be enrolled in a participating plan, with their credit subsidizing the premium.
Other findings show strong opposition to reducing seniors’ health benefits and to raising taxes on the middle class to pay for covering the uninsured, and concern about changes to current health coverage. A plurality support a more targeted approach to reform.
11 responses so far
1 balconesfault // Oct 19, 2009 at 2:57 pm
It is not a shock that most Americans oppose the individual mandate. Americans should be appalled by what will essentially be a demand that, in the absence of a public option, they give their money to private corporations or be penalized by the government.
It is not a shock that most Americans favor protecting Medicare. Attacking Medicare has been a political loser since its inception.
Not a surprise that the middle and lower classes oppose additional taxes on their classes to provide insurance for the uninsured. They know that their classes are hurting – and that their tax rates were hardly changed by the Bush Tax Cuts, while taxes on the wealthy were radically cut. It’s actually kind of remarkable that 39% of middle and lower class Americans, hard hit as they’ve been by the economic collapse in 2008 and still fearing for their jobs, support raising their own taxes to pay for healthcare for the uninsured – an amazing show of generosity.
As for will healthcare change if reform is passed? People are right to worry. Then again, they should worry that it will change even if reform isn’t passed. Companies are starting to look for additional ways to cut costs, and as premiums continue to rise anyone who believes their employer-provided insurance is safe, in the absence of a collectively bargained contract guaranteeing it, is uninformed.
What is striking to me about this survey is that they either didn’t ask one of the most critical questions in today’s debate – do you favor a government-run insurance system like Medicare that individuals can buy into? - or they asked, and didn’t like the result, and aren’t reporting it.
2 ottovbvs // Oct 19, 2009 at 3:09 pm
……I believe people are generally against strangling babies too…….these junk polls are veering off in to the humorous
3 ConArtist // Oct 19, 2009 at 4:47 pm
haha. I concur ottovbvs. Well put.
4 forgetn // Oct 19, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Washington Post Poll TODAY:
Majority now supports public health insurance option.
Just thought it was funny that WaPo and New Majority both claim that majority of Americans both Support and Oppose the health care reform; I guess the answer depends on the question.
Still amusing if nothing else
5 Kanzeon // Oct 19, 2009 at 10:34 pm
The reason conservatives lose is that there isn’t any reason for a thinking person to take them seriously. Alas, that applies to Frum’s site almost as much as Glenn Beck’s show.
The Galen Institute is an advocacy group – you can just look at their webpage: “The Galen Institute was founded by Grace-Marie Turner (then, Arnett) in 1995 to promote a conversation over free-market ideas in the health sector.” They say almost nothing about the methodology of the survey, which was performed by a low profile outfit. The questions are ridiculously skewed. In fact there is a lot of polling done on the individual mandate, for example:
http://facts.kff.org/chart.aspx?ch=927
http://www.gallup.com/poll/121664/majority-favors-healthcare-reform-this-year.aspx
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/globeunh_on_healthcare_mandate.php
http://www.gallup.com/poll/121664/majority-favors-healthcare-reform-this-year.aspx
http://www.quinnipiac.edu/x1295.xml?ReleaseID=1344
The answers vary greatly on how the questions are phrased. For example, Quinnipiac says that voters oppose an individual mandate, but favor an employer mandate. Gallup finds support for an individual mandate. I won’t even get into the question of how the matter of medicare cost cutting was spun.
Can’t you guys be honest, just for ten minutes? Is that so hard?
6 Reason60 // Oct 19, 2009 at 10:37 pm
It does depend on the question- I have seen half a dozen polls that either support or oppose the health care reform, depending on which option, which detail, etc.
Which is not surprising; most Americans are by nature sympathetic to the pains of others, and object on a moral level to letting people go without health care due to lack of money; but they are also leery of government programs, and reluctant to create a new open ended entitlement “right”.
My personal polling based on me and friends I know. About as scientific as the half dozen polls I have seen on cable news shows.
7 balconesfault // Oct 20, 2009 at 6:39 am
kanzeon – good post, although again, when you note Gallup finds support for an individual mandate – the question asked is Do you think all Americans should be required to have health insurance, or not” … and not Do you think all Americans should be required to purchase health insurance, or not” .
I think you would get very different responses to those questions, and that’s what the polls suggest (Galen asked the more specific – and thus in more valuable imo would you support “a new law saying that everyone either would have to obtain private or public health insurance approved by the government or pay a tax of $750 or more every year.” .
Now, I understand how any healthcare plan that requires companies to accept pre-existing conditions (very popular) must include a mandate for individual coverage to make sense. But let’s face it, that’s a message that doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker, and the opponents of reform are making sure that bumper sticker slogans dominate this debate.
But at this point, I’m going to consider any poll on healthcare which doesn’t specifically have a question on the public option to be irrelevant to the debate.
8 spikeytx86 // Oct 20, 2009 at 7:40 pm
balconesfault,
“and that their tax rates were hardly changed by the Bush Tax Cuts, while taxes on the wealthy were radically cut. ”
The Top Rate was cut from 39.6% to 35% and the Bottom Rate was cut from 15% to 10%. That’s less then a 12% tax cut for the top and a 1/3 cut for the bottom.
As well Working and Middle Class Families saw the Child Credit increased from $500 to $1,000.
But yeah keep up the myth that the Rich saw their tax rates “Radically” reduced.
9 sinz54 // Oct 21, 2009 at 9:56 am
Other polls have shown that Americans care deeply about controlling the skyrocketing rise in health care costs.
But without a strong mandate, the Baucus bill has no hope of controlling health care costs. The combination of guaranteed issue with a weak mandate is the worst of all possible worlds: Even the sickest applicants could no longer be turned down for insurance. Young, healthy Americans will elect to pay the nominal penalty rather than purchase health insurance (which would cost thousands of dollars more), and go without health insurance till they either get sick or have children (who inevitably get sick!). Only then will they purchase insurance. (I personally know at least one young person who has actually told me that’s her strategy.) The result will be a sicker pool of policyholders, forcing the insurers to raise premiums even more.
Most Americans don’t take direction from Baucus (and I’ll bet lots of average Americans don’t even know who he is). Obama was elected to work on the health care issue. But he has not taken a firm stand on any aspect of it. (And by “firm,” I mean the only way a POTUS can really be firm–by threatening a veto if he doesn’t get his way.)
Obama should have gone on nationwide TV and addressed the nation to explain how guaranteed issue and a mandate must go together. Or, if he wanted to go to the Left, he should have demanded a public option or else a veto.
Instead, Obama tossed the entire health care thing to Congress. That forces ordinary Americans to try to figure out the political infighting between Reid, Baucus, Snowe, Pelosi, etc. And the more they look at that mess, the less they like it.
10 sinz54 // Oct 21, 2009 at 9:58 am
Obama, not Baucus, should have been the public face of the health care reform bill.
Notice how just about everybody calls it “the Baucus bill” rather than “Obama’s bill”? Because that, in fact, is just what it is: It’s as if America elected Baucus to the POTUS instead of Obama.
11 Critical Leverage - Losing Faith in American Democracy: Healthcare ‘Reform’ and the Case for Election Reform - A Blast Blog // Jan 7, 2010 at 11:07 pm
[...] – in essence a Canadian-style single-payer system. The public, to the tune of 71 percent, also opposes the mandate in the bill. . Further, progressives in the last two elections have claimed a supermajority in both Houses, [...]
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