An ABC – Washington Post poll released today is absolutely chalked full of good news in the roller coaster ride that is this current health care debate…
Americans divide about evenly on the reform plan and Obama’s handling of health care alike neither better nor worse for him since summer. But 57 percent support one of the plan’s most contentious elements, a government-sponsored insurance option, and that soars to 76 percent if it’s limited to those who can’t get affordable private insurance.
The proposal of limiting the public option to those who can’t afford private plans and having it run by the states even garnered a majority of Republican support – 56%! However, before we get too excited about appeasing our friends on the other side of the aisle, the poll continues…
Indeed, Americans by 51-37 percent in this latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say they’d rather see a plan pass Congress without Republican support, if it includes a public option based on affordability, than with Republican backing but no such element.
This bleak picture for the opposition party continued with the news that Republican self-identification fell to a 26-year low of 20%. Only 19% of those polled indicated that they trusted the Republicans in Congress to make the right decisions for this country. While I don’t mean for the focus of this post to be Republican bashing, these numbers are almost certainly the result of Americans recognizing the need for change in the health care system and a conscious rejection of the Republicans’ “beat Obama at any cost” approach to taking care of our citizens.
This news also comes on the heels of (or was the cause of?) Senator Baucus’ (D-MT) comments today that the public option “issue is alive.” As chair of the Senate Finance Committee, he was the chief architect of the bill that was just passed last week by that body. His bill contained no form of public option, but must now be merged with a more liberal bill passed by the Senate Health Committee before reaching the full Senate.
There couldn’t be a better time for the College Democrats of Madison to take on the health care debate. Let’s keep the pressure on our elected officials and make sure every last American knows what is at stake.
