Poll shows Americans support passage of health care bill

Republicans, beware.

Your dream of an angry electorate rising up next November and returning your party to control of Congress probably is as fantastical as your objections to the health care legislation that passed the House of Representatives a few days ago.

Watching the debate on television, and then listening to it on my car radio off and on as I drove around Sunday afternoon, I kept hearing Republicans scream, "People don't want this bill!"

Well, if that was true on the weekend, Americans changed their minds by Tuesday.

A Gallup poll taken after the House vote, on Monday, found that 49% consider it a good thing that the House passed the legislation, while 40% thought it was a bad thing. Democrats favored health care reform 79/9 and Independents 46/45, while Republicans opposed it 14/76.

So if there's anyone out of touch with how Americans feel, it's the R's -- not the D's.

Per usual, 538's Nate Silver does a great job analyzing the bounce in support for health care reform in light of previous polls that showed more opposition. One of his points is so obvious I even thought of it prior to the vote.

Namely, that some people who didn't like the health care bill prior to its passage were disappointed that it didn't go far enough; they wanted it to be more progressive -- with a public option, for example.

When the House approved the bill, many (if not most) of these folks moved into the "good thing" camp. They still were disappointed that Congress caved in on the reforms they wanted, but viewed the legislation as better than the status quo.

Others, according to Silver, were more disapproving of the process being used to move the bill forward than with its substance. Now that the process is largely over, with just some Senate parliamentary wrangling remaining, that reason for not liking the bill takes a back seat to what it actually does.

Which, as I noted before, is pretty darn appealing to most people. Here's a nice summary of the immediate reforms in the legislation and how they'll benefit ordinary Americans.

The stock market seems to be betting that health care companies are going to benefit also, since that sector rose on the day after the reform legislation was approved by the House.

Looks like Wall Street saw through all the socialism! B.S. being spread by Republicans. Just as the American public increasingly will, as the benefits of the bill become apparent while the "sky is falling" fears fail to materialize.

Comments

[online doctor]

I've read so many article about problem in health care reform and I'm so upset with how people in government deal with that problem.