Don Roach

Froma Harrop is for me, the singular most frustrating writer within the Rhode Island journalistic diaspora. Yes, she trumps even Pat Crowley for me.  In a recent Projo article, she writes:

According to the poll, some 55 percent of Americans want a public option, with only 42 percent against it. That level of support was actually up slightly from a month earlier.

Here we have two recent polls showing significant backing for the public option. Ordinary Americans are for it. And physicians — the group with one of the biggest stakes in health-care reform — are even more strongly in favor. (It’s odd how few polls have sought the views of doctors, those most intimate with the medical system.)

So how did the public option become such a boogeyman that even moderate Democrats feel they must run from it? Or are some of them also on the insurers’ campaign payroll?

Well, if you do just a modicum of digging you’ll find that support for universal healthcare has waned significantly since 2003. From the same pollsters who brought you the cited poll, they found in 2003 that:

In an extensive ABCNEWS/Washington Post poll, Americans by a 2-1 margin, 62-32 percent, prefer a universal health insurance program over the current employer-based system. That support, however, is conditional: It falls to fewer than four in 10 if it means a limited choice of doctors, or waiting lists for non-emergency treatments.

Americans express broad, and in some cases growing, discontent with the U.S. health care system, based on its costs, structure and direction alike — fueling cautious support for a government-run, taxpayer-funded universal health system modeled on Medicare.

It’s not lost on me that the questions asked in 2003 were different than in 2009 but we have an increase of 10% opposed to “universal healthcare” as well as a 7% drop in support while healthcare costs have not significantly dropped in the ensuing years. I’d argue the contrary.

I point this out to say, lefty types like Harrop (if one may call her a lefty type) are trying to say, “See the people want this!!” in order to dismiss the real problems that are inherent with a universal plan. As I posted earlier, we need to try alternative solutions before choosing the “public option”. Most of the concern regarding healthcare is not that Americans really want the public option, it’s that they really want to lower their healthcare costs and for the government not to take their doctor away. That’s it.

Yet, the overwhelming amount of rhetoric in the debate has been public option or bust, especially from liberals, and citing various polls showing public support for universal healthcare. I’m not trying to undermine the support, what I am saying is that that support should be leveraged to find the best solution and understood for what it is. It is Americans saying “we need lower costs” but it is not saying “give me universal healthcare or give me death!!”

To Harrop and others, I don’t think they are able to make that distinction.