Asking the Right Questions

Thursday 16 September 2010 - Filed under Dumbassery + health care + Journalism

The American Spectator on polling Obamacare popularity:

ObamaCare booster Jonathan Cohn [. . .] notes that “While 40 percent of respondents said they supported repealing the Affordable Care Act, more than half changed their minds (leaving just 19 percent in favor of repeal) when pollsters mentioned that it’d mean letting insurance companies exclude people with pre-existing conditions.”

Yet this is the same argument that proponents of the legislation have used all along to explain poor poll results — that it’s more popular when you ask seperately about its component parts. The problem is that the popular parts are linked to other less popular parts to make up the whole. When you force insurers to cover those with pre-existing conditions, it means imposing an individual mandate, which remains highly unpopular. Had pollsters asked whether voters would favor repeal if it meant ending the requirement that people purchase government-approved insurance policies or pay a tax, I’m sure the pro-repeal numbers would have shot up.

It’s all about asking the right questions. Of course people want unicorns. But they’re not so excited when they find out that unicorns are really fucking expensive to feed, and they take massive shits all over the place. But even in the case of Obamacare where the questions are being framed specifically to illicit a positive response to it, people don’t want it.

2010-09-16  »  madlibertarianguy