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Senate Finance Committee Public Option amendment votes

What's this? Something brand new (to me, at least):
interesting. WI has badger care, i expect quite a few states have some sort of a program that DOESN'T involve ins companies. why give them any more $$?
 
But clearly their belief that it's a personal responsibility does not preclude them from supporting government health insurance guarantees, as that same poll indicates.

Notice the language used... I'm not sure it spins the way you seem to be implying.

Given the declines in public support for government responsibility seen this year in both the New York Times/CBS News and the Fox News polls, it will be important to see if the Gallup variant of the same question -- due to be updated in Gallup's November Health and Healthcare survey -- shows a similar shift.

The differing results to questions asking about government responsibility for health insurance may not be contradictory. A reasonable hypothesis could be that Americans generally believe people should take responsibility for their own healthcare coverage, while at the same time believing the government should provide a safety net for those who need it.

A system in which Americans are "primarily responsible" for their families' health insurance -- as the new Gallup question is phrased -- would not preclude having a government-based insurance program for the poor, such as the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) or Medicaid. By the same token, public support for the government's making sure "all Americans have healthcare coverage" -- as other questions are phrased -- isn't tantamount to support for mandated health insurance or a universal government-run system.
 
http://www.debatepolitics.com/breaking-news/57206-health-care-polls-leave-pols-dizzy.html

You could forgive a typical poll-driven pol for being driven around the bend by health reform.

Legislators hoping to learn what their constituents think about the issue — and how to vote to keep them happy — face a dizzying deluge of hard-to-reconcile data, some of which suggests that voters are more than a little confused, as well.

What to make of it, for example, when one poll finds that 63 percent think “death panels” are a “distortion” or “scare tactic,” and only 30 percent think the issue is “legitimate,” while another finds that 41 percent believe that people would die because “government panels” would prevent them from getting the treatment they needed?

Or when one survey finds that 55 percent of Americans support the public option, while another says 79 percent favor one — but also notes that only 37 percent people surveyed actually knew what “public option” meant?

The surveys are seemingly so sensitive that sometimes one word can spark charges of bias.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office recently griped about an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that asked whether Americans favor a public option that would compete with private insurance companies, rather than asking how important they felt it was to have the “choice” between a public option and private insurance, as they had before.

The wording tweak left the impression that support for the public option had dropped from 76 percent to 43 percent since June, critics argued.

Others have complained about a New York Times/CBS News poll that used a word with positive associations — “Medicare” — to describe the public option.

And an ABC News summary of the results of eight polls from late July through mid-August on “the public option” found that support for a public option ranged from 43 percent to 66 percent.

Polls on this topic are pretty much useless.
 
Hey maybe they could.... wait.. no this is GOOD.... represent their voters!!

wouldn't THAT be a kick in the pants!
 
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