Top 10 health care reform stories of 2009: #8 - Polls, polls, and more polls on health care reform

This poll tide turned in late July as this poll shows.

Welcome to the Top 10 health care stories of 2009.  The last chapter to the story of health care reform has still not been written but that does not mean we have not already experienced a lot.  Ever since health care reform started seriously being considered in the summer the American public has seen various reform-related stories dominate the news for a majority of the time.  Conservatives have managed to get their "groove back" in rising up to oppose reform while progressives have grown frustrated with the pace and magnitude of "change." 

For story #10 focusing on how President Obama "stupidly" commented on the Henry Louis Gates Jr. incident following a nationally-televised press conference click here.

For story #9 involving Representative Shadegg using an infant as a prop for his speech click here.

Story #8 covers the craziness over polling and health care reform.  Each side of the debate is passionate in their convictions and each side also wants to know that the majority agrees with them and not their opponents.  Every media outlet and polling organization fuels this craze by releasing the latest poll giving good news or bad news to reformers.

The debate began relatively well for Democrats as polls showed the public supporting reform in general along with the President.  However as the poll above shows public support began to slip in late July as various attacks against reform were made such as the alleged "death panels."  The next month of August would feature "town halls gone wild" which helped to further erode support for reform.  Meanwhile the President's approval rating also took a hit which did not help the reform effort at all.

By early September Rasmussen was showing that a majority of Americans opposed the reform bill before Congress.  The President attempted to change things by giving a nationally-televised address to a joint session of Congress.  This resulted in a short bounce in support of reform but eventually that bounce would also fade and support would return to levels seen before the speech.

Of course many of the polls were criticized and at times two polls released at the same time would reveal contradictory results.  The most notable example was a Rasmussen poll showing 35% support for the public option while a CBS poll showed 65% support at the same time.  A closer look at each poll revealed that the sampling formula and question helped to explain how the two organizations arrived at their conclusion.  As a result all we could really know was that the answer to any question depends on how you ask the question and to whom the question is asked.  That is hardly a new revelation.

Meanwhile progressives argued that polling conclusions are misleading.  For instance most polls show Americans opposed the health care reform bill yet when polled on the individual provisions of the health care bill (like getting rid of pre-existing conditions) a large majority actually support such measures.  It seems that people have learned to disapprove of "the bill" rather than actually opposing anything within the bill itself.  Progressives have also argued that the decline in support is largely due to the loss of public option which caused many liberals to turn against the bill.

In the end the polls provided good political fodder but meant little to the actual debate.  Many of the people surveyed in these polls who oppose and support the reform bill actually know very little about what is actually in the bill.  Many opponents likely still believe there is some kind of death panel in the bill even though that rumor has been largely debunked.  Supporters may believe that the bill gets rid of all caps in coverage but that is also not entirely true.

This is not to say that public support does not matter.  To paraphrase Lincoln anything is possible with public support but nothing is possible without it.  If public support falls too low then it will simply be impossible for Congress to pass a bill but as long as support stays at a respectable level Congress can always count the public changing their mind as they have many times in the past.