http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0909/27110.html

Steve: Have you seen this?

The quote that gets me is

From Obama’s perspective, he would be delighted if he won significant Republican support — but he does not want it bad enough to substantially scale back his policy goals or risk alienating Democratic congressional leaders.

Maybe I am missing something but I wonder what Obama could offer that would deliver 10% of the Republican caucus.

Tort reform isn’t enough.
No public option isn’t enough.
Subsidies to 300% of poverty isn’t enough
No death panels isn’t enough.
All four isn’t enough.

I am not even talking about getting a plan that 90% of Democrats would like.

I don’t think you can get any bill that would get 10% of Republicans and 50% of Democrats. And you need a lot more votes than that to pass a bill.

I just don’t see ANYTHING that would make 10% of the Republicans happy.

At this point, I'm not sure it matters. The idea of substantive reform from this group of lawmakers is laughable. I only hope I live long enough to watch history judge them as harshly as they deserve.

since god is a poll, and this is a godly country, i guess it's all over...

Go a little further into the poll and they report that the public will accept a public option if limited to people who can't get private insurance. It there is no other way then that is how you do it - that tactic gets the public option into the bill. Then the public option can be expanded as the failures of the private plans become obvious.

What do you think would happen if the 'poll' asked this question: would you support a public option if in fact it lowered your own premiums on your existing health insurance ?

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The repugs are winning or already have won the propaganda war. Noise works with too much of the electorate.Obama is too nice a guy! The MSM is in the hands of their corporate masters.

Gee, maybe it means people answering the polls have no basis whatsoever for their beliefs, and don't understand health care reform in the slightest, so they believe irrational and totally contradictory things?

I'm one of the people confused about the public option.

Obama says: "If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it" - now doesn't that mean that if you don't like your employer based coverage you have other options like going to the health exchange?

But Obama also says that the public option is only available to 5% of Americans - so obviously that means you can't opt to shop on the exchange if your employer offers any type of coverage. Which means that the first statement is wrong, in fact if you don't like your insurance, you will have to live with it.

Help, anyone?

Ohioan,

Clearly what Obama means is you have the choice to drop your employer sponsored plan and be fined for not carrying the mandated insurance.

Don't you see! You get a choice!

Nate Silver @ fivethirtyeight.com had an interesting commentary about this poll - he indicated that the numbers lent more toward the importance of specificity in the poll question, and that they should have specifically asked a question regarding an inclusion of the public option in addition to the exclusion of one. His point was that assumptions matter and their interpretation of the data was not the only one which could be inferred.

I was polled last week on the issue of "a public option" and was lukewarm in my support because unless I know exactly what public option I'm supporting, I'm going to find it hard to be enthusiastic about it... and I'm a progressive who strongly supports a nationwide regionally-administered single payer system.

Once again the responses are being analyzed without consideration of the clarity and/or validity of the questions.

Ohioan, the Public Option will be available to anyone purchasing individual insurance. And what are called 'smallest' employers will also have access to it. But equally they will have access to one or more private plans. The 5% number is the people expected to choose that option and not the number eligible.

And there is no logical contradiction between: "If you like your insurance you can keep it" and "If you don't like your employer supplied insurance, well too bad". You might not like the policy but it is not a contradiction as such.

The requirement to take employer supplied insurance is actually a protection for the worker in that it keeps employers from subtly gaming the system to shift more expensive workers off to the public plan even if they would get better coverage under the employer plan. (Though most progressives will never get this point.)

In order to understand this you have to put your employer game hat on. Under current law you can't overtly discriminate against people with health conditions, or families, or because of age. But if your insurance coverage includes an opt-out provision a ruthless employer could make it clear that any new hire with kids or a spouse with a health condition had better go with the public option or find that they didn't pass their probationary period.

Sneaky? Immoral? Illegal? Well yes. But do you think that employers won't game the system to reduce their own costs?

Now as it turns out the House Bill at least contains rules that allows certain workers to opt out of certain employer supplied plans. But what it doesn't do is allow employers to selectively force people out of their plans under the disguise of the employee freely opting out. This is a good thing.

Not that the cynics will catch up. They are bound and determined to believe that all of Washington DC, including Rangel and Kennedy were just out to fuck them over and force them into the jaws of the insurance companies.

Degrees of public support for the proposal really don't matter that much - partly because people don't really understand a lot of the issues.

What really matter is whether the actual package will work - will it cover people and will it at least curtail the explosive inflation in health care costs?

If the package does those two by November 2010 - it's a winner. If it doesn't - it's a disaster.

Just like Iraq - it didn't matter in the end that there was a surge of public support for the attack. It was a disaster and hence became unpopular.

Obama has 2 huge challenges now - he's got to get a health plan that works - and he's got to start getting people employed.

Thanks, Bruce @12:13 - makes sense now. I accept your point about the 'no logical contradiction' although you have to admit it is easy to assume the converse holds true.

doubtful @11:52, please read Bruce Webb, you don't necessarily have a choice to "drop your employer sponsored plan"...

However I wonder - if there is no new "choice and competition" for large employer-based plans, what is the incentive for insurance companies to offer low premium plans there? ie, I am thinking they would choose to offer low premium plans only on the exchange for individuals and small employers - the plans they offer large employers would still be the same old high deductible nonsense... any thoughts?

Today looks li8ke a day where I'll get everybody mad at me, but I have to say it,
Kevin says "supporters of the public plan are mostly pretty lukewarm." As far as I can tell, supporters of health care reform are equally lukewarm. Where are our demonstrations in favor of it -- even though it is weaker than we like?

(Oh, no, we are too 'pure' for that. Just think, if the blogosphere had been around in the thirties how much we could have criticized that rich 'tool of class intrerests,' that spineless compromiser who made sure to include a blatantly racist exclusion of (mostly black) agricultural workers in his Social Security. We could have made damn sure that nothing like this had passed. we could have made sure blacks were covered -- and maybe we would have finally gotten around to passing it, about 1964 or so.

Look at last week. The left blogosphere raised almost (maybe by now over) a million dollars for Ron Miller -- the way we did for Elwyn Tinklenburg last election. And ninety-nine percent of it came from people who couldn't tell us what position Ron Miller took on health care -- or anything else.

Now Joe Wilson is a truly awful man, tied in with the racist takeover of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, one of the seven state legislators who voted to keep the Confederat flag flying over the State House.

It is hard to imagine that Miller could be worse, and for all I, or anyone knows, he's a solid Progressive -- though I doubt it, if he was able to win 46% of the vote in a district that supported Wilson.

The point is that nobody knows. You can't even find him by Googling him -- but if you try, the first sponsored ad is for ... Joe Wilson. (He made a big buy with google, so his ad comes up first if you Google 'you lie!' as well.)

But when has anyone here simply sent a five dollar bill to an incumbent's relelection campaign -- barrting a special case like Steve Cohen -- not because he or she was in a tough race but simply to say thank you for fighting for us. Or even an e-mail saying that.

And how many of us will stand up to the sort of negativity that 'zhak' expressed so well and actually said "I support President
Obama, and many of the Senators and Representatives who are working with him. Yes, he's done things I disagree with -- and I expected thast, because he's President of a country of 300 million people, most of whom are less liberal than I am. But he's still, even now, better, more intelligent, and more adult, than any President since LBJ (on domestic matters). And he doesn't have available the patronage, the horse-trading, and the flat-out blackmail that FDR and LBJ needed to get bills we now celebrate passed."

I'll say it. Anybody have the guts to join me. Because I'm not seeing anyone else saying it.

Bruce wrote his comment while I was writing mine. Let me repeat one important line:

"Not that the cynics will catch up. They are bound and determined to believe that all of Washington DC, including Rangel and Kennedy were just out to fuck them over and force them into the jaws of the insurance companies."

Nailed it. Sometimes it looks like we are so mad at the Republicans trying to kill health care reform because it means we can't kill it ourselves.

The problem here is that the public option is ill-defined and has generally vague promises.

I have to add to my Ron Miller comment. I am currently Googling "Ron Miller South Carolina." I'm on page ten, and still have not found anything relating to the Ron Miller we gave all that money to. (Unless he is the singer, the pastor, the Arizona sex offender, or the artist with that name.)

Does anyone know who it was we gave all that money to?

My blushes, it was RoB Miler, and I have found his website. I'm now even madder. We've given a lot of money to replace a truly vicious racist with an ultraconservative Blue Dog whose positions are so 'boiler plate conservative' that all he will add to the Congress is another 'D'; while we do nothing for the people who are actually fighting for us.

I think that the republicans need to come clean on health care reform. A slice of the republican party has completely whipped up their constituents into believing many things about the various health care proposals that are simply untrue. The reason why? These republican politicians see the democrats health care initiative as simply a big step along the path to single payer which translates into gov't run health care. These politicians are ideologically opposed to this. All these accusations about death panels, illegal immigrants getting health care, public options putting private insurance out of business, reducing medicare benefits are simply a republican scare tactic. If these issues were "reality", the republicans would deal with them through the house and senate committees. They should be completely ashamed. They are the ones lying.

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