The People Have Spoken
The story of Rep.-elect Andy Harris demanding his government health care NOW has had a lot of resonance in the media. Silly GOP, they thought all that health care rhetoric is just for show, now voters are asking them to put their money where their mouth is – turn down your health care plan.
Most Americans think incoming Congressmen who campaigned against the health care bill should put their money where their mouth is and decline government provided health care now that they’re in office. Only 33% think they should accept the health care they get for being a member of Congress while 53% think they should decline it and 15% have no opinion.
Democrats are actually the most supportive of anti-health care Congressmen taking their health care, with 40% saying they should accept it to 46% who think they should decline. But Republicans and independents- who put these folks in office in the first place- strongly think they should refuse their government provided health care. GOP voters hold that sentiment by a 58/28 margin and indys do 56/27.
Republicans have been crowing about the election results, claiming they have a mandate to repeal health care reform. They may have a mandate to be uninsured but a new poll shows that people actually want more health care reform, not less.
The post-election survey showed that 51 percent of registered voters want to keep the law or change it to do more, while 44 percent want to change it to do less or repeal it altogether.
Driving support for the law: Voters by margins of 2-1 or greater want to keep some of its best-known benefits, such as barring insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions. One thing they don’t like: the mandate that everyone must buy insurance.
I really do hope that Congress is listening to the voters but the messages are fairly contradictory. I think we’re at a point where our country could go either way. We could continue our march towards inequality and corporatism or we could turn it around. We’ll have to make sure we keep the pressure on our elected officials to listen to the people and not just the big money.
Notice that the poll question did not list “Replace with Single-Payer” as an option.
Can’t have the people considering what’s proven and possible, instead of what the customers of McClatchy News want considered.
If they listened or cared, we’d have universal health care or at least a public option.
Where is your evidence that a majority of Americans want universal health care? There’s a pretty sizeable portion that doesn’t. They may be misguided and hypocritical but they exist. There was a huge backlash against even the limited changes that we got.
U.I., the moneyed interests won’t even allow universal healthcare to be seriously discussed. The public option had huge support in polls.
It all depends how you ask the question. Americans support public funding for health care, but are opposed to a “socialist government takeover of health care”. And “Hands off my Medicare!”
Go figure.
However, it is true that the industry propaganda has made some inroads into the long-standing US support for universal health care.
🙂
But this doesn’t fit into the media’s perpetual conflict narrative and must be completely ignored. Otherwise the price of selling soap may decrease the bottom line for their holders of stock.