Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Americans Still Want Health Care Reform


The Republicans, and even a few gutless Democrats, have been preaching that Americans don't want health care reform. They point to Brown's victory in Massachusetts as proof of that. According to them, the people voted against health care reform as much as voted for Brown.

But that is just not true, as a new CNN/Opinion Research poll shows. The poll was taken of 1,009 adult Americans between January 22nd and 24th. It is true that a clear majority of Americans did not like what the Senate and House had come up with and called "reform". A full 58% of the public did not like those bills -- and this includes both people from the right and from the left.

These people saw those two rather pathetic bills as a poor excuse for real reform. It shows that the American people are not nearly as stupid as Congress seems to think they are. The poll asked what Congress should do now, and gave three options -- pass bill similar to those approved by House and Senate, start over on an entirely new bill or stop trying to pass any kind of health reform. Here are the results:

Pass a similar bill..........30%
Start work on a new bill..........48%
Stop work on health care..........21%
No opinion..........1%

Health care reform wins hands down. Nearly half of Americans would like for Congress to start over with an entirely new bill, and a full 78% want to see some kind of health care reform passed. Only one in five Americans is actually opposed to health care reform.

And they're not talking about some kind of wimpy band-aid approach to health care reform. The poll then asked if the people would approve of Congress just passing some new regulations for the health insurance companies without increasing the number of people covered by some kind of insurance. About 51% of the respondents said that would not be good enough.

Americans elected the Democrats because they promised to deliver real health care reform, and they are still waiting on them to deliver on that promise. The Democrats need to find their missing spines and start over on health care reform using the budget reconciliation process. They need to rein in the excesses and wrongdoing by private insurance, and include a public option that would bring down premiums and insure that all Americans have insurance coverage.

The American people still want health care reform. They are waiting. How about it, Democrats? Can you deliver?

3 comments:

  1. i think they should start from scratch and give us what we want not what the house/senate want..them bastids.

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  2. I agree. But the real question is: What do we want?

    English is such an inexact language. For instance, it's my understanding that in the Zapotec languages of the indigenous people of Oaxaca state in Mexico, there's both an "inclusive we" and an "exclusive we."

    If you were to say "Give us what we want" using the inclusive we, it would mean "Give us what we want [and you're part of the group that's wanting something]".

    On the other hand, if you were to say "Give us what we want" using the exclusive we, it would mean "Give us what we want [and not being part of our group, what you want isn't necessarily what we want].

    I suspect if you were speaking Zapotec, you'd be using the "exclusive we." And therein lies the problem.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Medicare for all.

    And the Dems won't deliver until they grow a spine.

    But then again, why should they? THEY have the best insurance in the world. They can just buy a spine.

    UGH

    ReplyDelete

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