Republicans who are running on the repeal health insurance reform ticket this year need to look a little more closely at what the public wants, a new national survey suggests.
Researchers at Indiana University’s Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research (CHPPR) polled the country, and discovered not only that "48 percent of Americans actually would like for Congress to continue working on health care system reforms," but that "63 percent of those individuals who supported repealing the legislation also were in favor of Congress continuing to work on health care system reforms."
It suggest that the message of "this is a start for health reform" is a good one for Democrats, and that the "repeal" message is resonating because people aren't necessarily satisfied with what passed, and don't want outright repeal, but want to see the law built upon and think it should go further.
What does a majority want to see in that continued reform? The public option. It's not surprising, since it was the one element of reform that consistently received majority support in polling throughout the debate. But there are real surprises that finding.
When asked how important they thought it was for Congress to work on “establishment of a public option that would give individuals a choice between government provided health insurance or private health insurance,” 67 percent of Americans rated this as an important topic to address. This finding is even more striking given the fact that 59 percent of those in favor of repealing the health care reform legislation rated the public option as important to pursue. Another surprise is that 67 percent of Republicans and 59 percent of Independents also agreed that the public option was an important topic to be addressed by Congress.
Here it is in graphic form:
Continued strong support for a public option cuts across age ranges as well.
It would be smart of Dems to continue to push stand alone fix bills to stay consistent with the message of the new health insurance reform law as something to build upon. The anti-trust exemption repeal would be a really smart place to start--it takes on the insurance industry and is already half done--the House passed it last year. But action on Grayson's public option bill would be smart, too.