Kaiser healthcare poll raises questions about public option responses

by Kay B. Day

Leftists in the Democratic Party want another public option for healthcare despite the fact Medicaid and Medicare are taxpayer sinkholes with a level of oversight similar to a cat watching sparrows scritching beneath the bushes. The Chicago Tribune cited a Kaiser Family Foundation September health care survey that showed “57 percent of Americans support the creation of a public health insurance option similar to Medicare."  Questions and analysis of the poll are posted online. But a review of all data provided raises questions about the questions and the analysis.

The Foundation said the survey was based on, “a nationally representative random sample of 1,203 adults ages 18 and older. Telephone interviews conducted by landline (801) and cell phone (402, including 147 who had no landline telephone) were carried out in English and Spanish by Princeton Survey Research Associates. The margin of sampling error for the total sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. For results based on subgroups, the margin of sampling error is higher. Note that sampling error is only one of many potential sources of error in this or any other public opinion poll.”

The poll asked questions about the public option, but the response The Tribune cites is more complicated when you look at the actual Health Tracking poll.  Perhaps the reporter had a different study or a different set of responses. The question The US Report located that seems closest to the citation in the paper was as follows: “[Do you favor or oppose] Creating a government-administered public health insurance option similar to Medicare to compete with private insurance plans*?”

The asterisk denotes: “Note: Items marked with an asterisk (*) asked of separate half samples as a wording experiment.”

Responses showed 30 percent of respondees 'strongly' favored that type plan and 28 percent 'somewhat' favored. Polls, by the way, do not offer specifics on what 'somewhat' means.

Remember The Chicago Tribune article said, “The nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation's September health care survey showed 57 percent of Americans support the creation of a ‘public health insurance option similar to Medicare,’ down just 2 percentage points from the August and July surveys.”

Here’s the problem with politics and polls. Respondees have no idea what they are supporting because there is no final bill yet that discloses what a public option similar to Medicare might be. We already know what the future of Medicare will bring—a program too big to fail will probably fail unless there is a sizable across the board tax increase. As we write, neoliberal groups are urging Congress to consider a national sales tax (value-added or VAT tax) in addition to income tax.

Note Medicare is not solely responsible for our problems—Medicaid is quite possibly the most irresponsibly overseen program in the world.

Not a single group has called for true government reform as in cutting budgets. Yet American households are cutting budgets left and right.

A poll from Rasmussen Reports offers another dimension to the Kaiser poll. Rasmussen said, “Sixty-three percent (63%) of voters nationwide say guaranteeing that no one is forced to change their health insurance coverage is a higher priority than giving consumers the choice of a "public option" health insurance company.”[Oct. 4, 2009]

Polls are popular with media, but media analyses often leave out information that permits the reader to put the poll results in context, effectively raising questions about questions. Had the respondees been asked if they would be willing to pay for another federal welfare program through tax increases, or if they were willing to give up their current healthcare plan, support might not have been as strong for a public option. In any case, the support was certainly more qualified than media suggested.

Poll results are often cited with data outside the context of the poll. That’s worth bearing in mind when we read articles touting a particular response. When you look at the data, the support The Tribune states is far more complicated than a single statistic.

The Kaiser Foundation offers caveats about the poll: "[A]s we have consistently found in our polling throughout the year, the public’s views on these often complex proposals remain moveable. When those who favored the individual mandate were asked 'What if you heard that this could mean that some people would be required to buy health insurance that they find too expensive or did not want,' enough people changed their minds to drop support from 68 percent to 29 percent."

One would think a reporter would point that out.