Polling on the health care reform is a lot of sound and fury signifying nothing

Health care polls like these mean little.

The polling craze has hit fever pitch recently on health care reform.  Despite the volumes of date we receive in reality we still know very little about public opinion.  For every negative poll for reform you can find another poll that positive.  Much of the polling tells us nothing at all really.  Here is a sampling of some of the recent polling and its "meaning" or lack thereof.

Rasmussen says 32% favor a single-payer health care while 57% oppose.  This would be wonderful data if any of the bills being discussed in Congress included a single-payer plan.  In reality none of them do.

Rasmussen also reports that "public support for the health care reform proposed by President Obama and Congressional Democrats" has fallen to a new low of 42%.  This is slightly more relevant but still reveals little.  Many oppose reform because it is "socialist" while quite a few liberals actually oppose reform because it is not socialist enough.  In addition, the poll includes President Obama and Congressional Democrats.  Once you include Obama in the question you automatically deduct a good 30% of the population who will disapprove no matter what.  Add Congressional Democrats to the equation and you have probably another 20% who will oppose no matter what.  I would be interested to see what the poll revealed if it simply asked who favored the reform package without including President Obama or the Congressional Democrats.  For instance, ask people if they favor tax cuts and you will likely get a positive number.  Ask people if they favor the George Bush tax cuts and I almost guarantee you will get a lower number.

USA Today reports that 34% of the public say town halls have made them more sympathetic to protesters while 21% have become more sympathetic.  So what does that tell us about reform.  If people who hated reform before just became "more sympathetic" to protesters did anything really change.  If people who support reform are simply "sympathetic" to protesters but still in favor of reform what does this really mean anything?

I could go on and on but you get the point.  The data is numerous and everyone hails their poll as monumental but in reality the data is misleading and really tells us very little.  Even pro-reform data is confusing.  Liberals love to cite the data that over 70% support reform but a good number of those people could simply support tort reform which is not included in the current bills.

One informative article I found compares polling on whether American support a "public option."  This sort of data which surveys more than one poll and also looks at how the polling question is worded before making conclusions regarding public opinion.  The website shows that opinion on the public option varies greatly depending on how you word the question.  If you ask if government should offer health insurance you get a positive response.  If, on the other hand, you ask people if they want government to setup a government run health insurance that competes with private insurance you get a negative response.

So in conclusion we know very little about what Americans want.  We know they want reform but we are not sure of what reform they want.  We know they are not crazy about the current plan but we do not know why.  We do not even know if Americans themselves know why they oppose reform.  After all, how many Americans have really read the 1,000 page bill or the hundreds of articles analyzing the bill?  How many people are simply listening to their media figure, liberal or conservative, who tells them the bill is manna from heaven or the anti-Christ in paper form?  Until we know more it is all just a lot of noise signifying nothing in the form of polls.