72% of Americans support government run healthcare

[Annie]

So the assumption is that in this broad cross section, a contruction worker represents the interests of ALL contruction workers, a soldier a soldier, a Doctor a Doctor, a housewife a housewife? That is why the data in flawed from the start in such a low number of people questioned, because it makes assumptions based on the person(s) taking the poll. In order for this poll to be accurate it has to contain a much larger number of people to have a true reflection as to the feelings of most Americans. Let me cite you an example, I can during an election cycle poll 895 people and come out with an opinion that will tell me mickey mouse will be the next president of the United States if I question the right people and use a low enough number of people to represent the intentions of ALL the voters. In short this poll is flawed based on the following, the poll sample represents the intentions of exactly .00000385ths of Americans and even if you used a factor of 20 or 19 the data is still flawed because the poll sample number is too low. This poll while interesting is meaningless, because it represents the interests of less than 1% of the people that need, want, or have healthcare.

Hard to believe that one can fathom American public opinion by polling such a small number of people, isn't it?

Nevertheless that's the way that math works, not just for this poll, but for all polls.

It's not the numbers that bother me, it's the skew of the sample that bothers me:

Latest New York Times/CBS News Poll on Health - The New York Times

Last question. What were the voting percentages? I think McCain garnered a tad over 25%. It's oversampling of the demographics that favor their desired outcome.

So what the headline should have read was: "Most Obama voters support substantial changes to healthcare and are willing to pay higher taxes for a government run system."

Even with a sample that basically agrees with the outcome when one gets below the fold one finds:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/21/health/policy/21poll.html?_r=2&partner=rss&emc=rss

...Yet the survey also revealed considerable unease about the impact of heightened government involvement, on both the economy and the quality of the respondents’ own medical care. While 85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care....

...It is not clear how fully the public understands the complexities of the government plan proposal, and the poll results indicate that those who said they were following the debate were somewhat less supportive....

and there's this 'gem' which is reminiscent of the Iraq casualty numbers put out by Lancet:

...While the survey results depict a nation desperate for change, it also reveals a deep wariness of the possible consequences. Half to two-thirds of respondents said they worried that if the government guaranteed health coverage, they would see declines in the quality of their own care and in their ability to choose doctors and get needed treatment...

Exactly what the hell does 50-66% mean? They couldn't figure out the percentage of 800 some people's response?

If this poll was being held as reflective of a Bush driven policy, I think the reaction around these parts would be very different.

 

[sealybobo]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans strongly support fundamental changes to the healthcare system and a move to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Saturday.

The poll came amid mounting opposition to plans by the Obama administration and its allies in the Democratic-controlled Congress to push through the most sweeping restructuring of the U.S. healthcare system since the end of World War Two.

Republicans and some centrist Democrats oppose increasing the government's role in healthcare -- it already runs the Medicare and Medicaid systems for the elderly and indigent -- fearing it would require vast public funds and reduce the quality of care.

But the Times/CBS poll found 85 percent of respondents wanted major healthcare reforms and most would be willing to pay higher taxes to ensure everyone had health insurance. An estimated 46 million Americans currently have no coverage.

Seventy-two percent of those questioned said they backed a government-administered insurance plan similar to Medicare for those under 65 that would compete for customers with the private sector. Twenty percent said they were opposed.

Wide support for government health plan: poll | Reuters

They fear you Chris. Keep up the good work. It is so funny to read your posts/threads, know you are 100% on the button, and then see these right wing freaks attack you so hard. You are the man. And notice how they try to discredit people like you, Michael Moore & Al Franken. I guess the truth frightens them.

 

[Navy1960]

So the assumption is that in this broad cross section, a contruction worker represents the interests of ALL contruction workers, a soldier a soldier, a Doctor a Doctor, a housewife a housewife? That is why the data in flawed from the start in such a low number of people questioned, because it makes assumptions based on the person(s) taking the poll. In order for this poll to be accurate it has to contain a much larger number of people to have a true reflection as to the feelings of most Americans. Let me cite you an example, I can during an election cycle poll 895 people and come out with an opinion that will tell me mickey mouse will be the next president of the United States if I question the right people and use a low enough number of people to represent the intentions of ALL the voters. In short this poll is flawed based on the following, the poll sample represents the intentions of exactly .00000385ths of Americans and even if you used a factor of 20 or 19 the data is still flawed because the poll sample number is too low. This poll while interesting is meaningless, because it represents the interests of less than 1% of the people that need, want, or have healthcare.

Most national polls have a sample of around 1,000 people that are accurate within 3% of the sample and a confidence interval of 95%. In English, that means given any specific poll at any given time, we expect it to be accurate within 3% 19 times out of 20.

Let's look at the last Presidential election. The final results for the popular vote was Obama 53%, McCain 46%.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2008 - General Election: McCain vs. Obama

So, the confidence interval tells us we would expect Obama to receive 50% to 56% of the vote 19 times out of 20 and McCain to receive between 49% and 43% 19 times out of 20.

What actually happened in the election? Here are the polls on the last days of the election.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2008 - Latest Polls

There were 15 polls on the last weekend of the election. Every poll had Obama between 50% and 55%. Every poll had McCain between 48% and 42%. So the polls were pretty accurate even though the typical poll had about 1,000 respondents.

If you averaged out the polls, Obama was at 52.1% but received 52.9% while McCain was at 44.5% and received 45.6%. We would expect the average to be closer given that the 15 polls account for a population sample of around 20,000 (out of 300 million).

So, yeah, 1,000 people is usually a pretty fair assessment of the national mood. Political parties don't pay pollsters millions of dollars for nothing. There are many reasons to be skeptical about this poll, but generally, the methodological construction is probably not one of them.

Indeed, it is the perceived power of the polls
that has in recent years prompted the
development of "advocacy polling," which is
the use of polls by interest groups to create an
aura of strong popular support for their
favored positions. Typically this is achieved
by the employment of unrepresentative
samples, leading questions, or selective
reporting of results. Such "findings" merely
add to the sense of cacophony in national
polls and surveys.

The usual 3% warning represents the rounded
evaluation of the confidence interval for a
population proportion (p) of 0.50, at a
probability value of 0.95, when the sample is
of the relatively conventional size of 1500
cases. With progressively smaller samples the
error margins may be widened to four or five
percentage points, for the chief governor
precision for such estimates, comparable to
the resolving power of telescopes, is indeed
sample size. A three percentage point warning
for a sample of 1500 cases may in one sense
be seen as conservative, since the unrounded
solution is only [plus-or-minus]2.53
percentage points, and even this value takes
the error at its maximum (where p = 0.5):
once past very even divisions of the
population, the calculated error margin drops
below [plus-or-minus]2.50%.
http://www.stevetoner.com/handouts/Assessing_the_Accuracy_of_Polls_and_Surveys.pdf

While I tend not to put much stock in polls in general for this very reason, as too often the sample data is too low and does not represent the true feelings of Americans within a poll. It would seem that those who support an issue as long as the poll supports it would have no reason to doubt it's accuracy. However, that does not mitigate the fact that this sample data is too low and as a matter of fact I can cite you a numerous cases of faulty polling data used as gospel in the past...

A new study on California’s Proposition 8 voting trends released Tuesday found that far fewer African-Americans voted to pass the gay marriage ban than the 70% suggested by exit polling and concluded that race was not the most significant factor affecting people’s vote for or against marriage equality.
Prop. 8 Exit Polling of African-Americans Way Off, Experts Say  | News | Advocate.com

So regardless of these polling companies stated missions, in order to have a true accurate picture, you would need an averaged sample done over the course of time, if you were to use such a low number of people in a data pool and those people would have to be different each time as a representatative of the whole. Again, on a personal level I could care less what a poll says one way or the other, however in this case Toro I have to disagree with you.

 

[Navy1960]

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Following an Election Day prediction that Democratic candidate John Kerry would win more than 300 electoral votes and the presidency, one of America's most well known polling firms continued the job Wednesday of explaining its flawed projection.

Shawnta Watson Walcott, communications director for Zogby International, joined a group of liberal Democrats at a faux congressional hearing focused on whether fraud influenced the Nov. 2 outcome.

"... it has become increasingly clear that this election has produced unprecedented levels of suspicion regarding its outcome, and we join this panel discussion in an attempt to find a resolution to these issues," said Walcott, who represented the firm's president and long time political pollster John Zogby at the forum sponsored by Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee.
Zogby Polling Seeks Damage Control After Election Day Flub

 

[sealybobo]

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Following an Election Day prediction that Democratic candidate John Kerry would win more than 300 electoral votes and the presidency, one of America's most well known polling firms continued the job Wednesday of explaining its flawed projection.

Shawnta Watson Walcott, communications director for Zogby International, joined a group of liberal Democrats at a faux congressional hearing focused on whether fraud influenced the Nov. 2 outcome.

"... it has become increasingly clear that this election has produced unprecedented levels of suspicion regarding its outcome, and we join this panel discussion in an attempt to find a resolution to these issues," said Walcott, who represented the firm's president and long time political pollster John Zogby at the forum sponsored by Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee.
Zogby Polling Seeks Damage Control After Election Day Flub

In other words Zogby polls confirm our 2004 election was stolen.

We should have protested. And Iran should have stayed out of it.

 

[Terral]

Hi Chris:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans strongly support fundamental changes to the healthcare system and a move to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Saturday . . .

Then 72% of Americans are idiots, so the numbers seem about right. The current healthcare costs are through the roof and Obama's form of Fascism is only going to make things FAR more expensive and the situation FAR worse. The Plan guarantees even more money to caregivers and someone MUST FOOT THE BILL, which means higher taxes for everybody and increased cost for everything; which drives down demand for American Goods and more JOBS go right out the window.

The caregivers are charging more and more and more, because they can. Period. Imagine if everyone lost his insurance and caregivers had to service patients by what 'we can afford.' The wages of masons and carpenters and dry-wallers and painters and roofers and everyone working with their hands ARE GOING DOWN, so either the price of healthcare goes down too, OR those goods and services become what only the rich can afford.

Since we cannot afford more taxes, and people without JOBS do not even pay taxes, then the escalating Healthcare Bubble will eventually burst like all the others . . . Watch and see . . .

A majority of Americans are looking for a free healthcare lunch and no such thing exists . . .

GL,

Terral

 

[Navy1960]

Capitol Hill (CNSNews.com) - Following an Election Day prediction that Democratic candidate John Kerry would win more than 300 electoral votes and the presidency, one of America's most well known polling firms continued the job Wednesday of explaining its flawed projection.

Shawnta Watson Walcott, communications director for Zogby International, joined a group of liberal Democrats at a faux congressional hearing focused on whether fraud influenced the Nov. 2 outcome.

"... it has become increasingly clear that this election has produced unprecedented levels of suspicion regarding its outcome, and we join this panel discussion in an attempt to find a resolution to these issues," said Walcott, who represented the firm's president and long time political pollster John Zogby at the forum sponsored by Democratic members of the House Judiciary Committee.
Zogby Polling Seeks Damage Control After Election Day Flub

In other words Zogby polls confirm our 2004 election was stolen.

We should have protested. And Iran should have stayed out of it.

nice try sealy, and you understand the implication of the post. I don't have to explain it.

 

[sealybobo]

Hi Chris:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Americans strongly support fundamental changes to the healthcare system and a move to create a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll published on Saturday . . .

Then 72% of Americans are idiots, so the numbers seem about right. The current healthcare costs are through the roof and Obama's form of Fascism is only going to make things FAR more expensive and the situation FAR worse. The Plan guarantees even more money to caregivers and someone MUST FOOT THE BILL, which means higher taxes for everybody and increased cost for everything; which drives down demand for American Goods and more JOBS go right out the window.

The caregivers are charging more and more and more, because they can. Period. Imagine if everyone lost his insurance and caregivers had to service patients by what 'we can afford.' The wages of masons and carpenters and dry-wallers and painters and roofers and everyone working with their hands ARE GOING DOWN, so either the price of healthcare goes down too, OR those goods and services become what only the rich can afford.

Since we cannot afford more taxes, and people without JOBS do not even pay taxes, then the escalating Healthcare Bubble will eventually burst like all the others . . . Watch and see . . .

A majority of Americans are looking for a free healthcare lunch and no such thing exists . . .

GL,

Terral

Obstruct progress much with misinformation?

 

[Toro]

Indeed, it is the perceived power of the polls
that has in recent years prompted the
development of "advocacy polling," which is
the use of polls by interest groups to create an
aura of strong popular support for their
favored positions. Typically this is achieved
by the employment of unrepresentative
samples, leading questions, or selective
reporting of results. Such "findings" merely
add to the sense of cacophony in national
polls and surveys.

The usual 3% warning represents the rounded
evaluation of the confidence interval for a
population proportion (p) of 0.50, at a
probability value of 0.95, when the sample is
of the relatively conventional size of 1500
cases. With progressively smaller samples the
error margins may be widened to four or five
percentage points, for the chief governor
precision for such estimates, comparable to
the resolving power of telescopes, is indeed
sample size. A three percentage point warning
for a sample of 1500 cases may in one sense
be seen as conservative, since the unrounded
solution is only [plus-or-minus]2.53
percentage points, and even this value takes
the error at its maximum (where p = 0.5):
once past very even divisions of the
population, the calculated error margin drops
below [plus-or-minus]2.50%.
http://www.stevetoner.com/handouts/Assessing_the_Accuracy_of_Polls_and_Surveys.pdf

What this says is that a sample size of 1500 generates a mean such that two standard deviations are are within 2.5% of the mean at a confidence interval of 95%. Generally, a sample size of 1000 generates two standard deviations of 3% from the mean. We would expect this as the standard deviation around the mean narrows as the sample size increases.

While I tend not to put much stock in polls in general for this very reason, as too often the sample data is too low and does not represent the true feelings of Americans within a poll. It would seem that those who support an issue as long as the poll supports it would have no reason to doubt it's accuracy. However, that does not mitigate the fact that this sample data is too low and as a matter of fact I can cite you a numerous cases of faulty polling data used as gospel in the past...

A new study on California’s Proposition 8 voting trends released Tuesday found that far fewer African-Americans voted to pass the gay marriage ban than the 70% suggested by exit polling and concluded that race was not the most significant factor affecting people’s vote for or against marriage equality.
Prop. 8 Exit Polling of African-Americans Way Off, Experts Say *|*News | Advocate.com

So regardless of these polling companies stated missions, in order to have a true accurate picture, you would need an averaged sample done over the course of time, if you were to use such a low number of people in a data pool and those people would have to be different each time as a representatative of the whole. Again, on a personal level I could care less what a poll says one way or the other, however in this case Toro I have to disagree with you.

There are a few things. First, any given poll may be wrong. With a confidence interval of 95%, that means that there is a 5% that the true mean of the population will be greater than 2 standard deviations from the sample mean, which in our case, is a poll. It may be that if the poll is statistically unbiased, then there is a 5% chance that it is inaccurate.

Second, polling assumes that the sample is unbiased. If there are construction problems, then, obviously, the poll is not. That is what happened with black voters in CA. That is what happened for the exit polls in 2004.

Finally, political polls do not necessarily reflect what will actually happen on election day. Elections are also driven by organization. In the 2006 Canadian election, all the polls on the last weekend of the vote had the Conservatives winning 34% of the vote. On the election, they won 38%. It is generally thought that this was because the Tories were better organized to get their vote out.

However, it has usually been my experience that those who dispute a poll's accuracy do so because they disagree with the outcome and it contradicts what they believe. That does not mean they are wrong, of course, but a person must ask themself that if it is the poll that is biased or if it is they who are unbiased. Usually, it is the person that is biased.

 

[editec]

Obviously a poll worded in such as way that it is designed to elite a certain response is worthless.

Nevertheless it doesn't take a huge population to get a valid poll if it is done correctly.

FWIW I seldom pay attention to polls since so many of them are designed not to really guage true sentiment, but designed to get an outcome so that its designers can make the 6 o'cock news with a bumpersticker headline.

 

[sealybobo]

Obviously a poll worded in such as way that it is designed to elite a certain response is worthless.

Nevertheless it doesn't take a huge population to get a valid poll if it is done correctly.

FWIW I seldom pay attention to polls since so many of them are designed not to really guage true sentiment, but designed to get an outcome so that its designers can make the 6 o'cock news with a bumpersticker headline.

I just wonder why 28% want the status quo.

 

[Political Junky]

Obviously a poll worded in such as way that it is designed to elite a certain response is worthless.

Nevertheless it doesn't take a huge population to get a valid poll if it is done correctly.

FWIW I seldom pay attention to polls since so many of them are designed not to really guage true sentiment, but designed to get an outcome so that its designers can make the 6 o'cock news with a bumpersticker headline.

I just wonder why 28% want the status quo.

It is a puzzlement. Some of those are the super rich, but others just haven't been destroyed financially from hospital bills .. yet.

 

[Navy1960]

Indeed, it is the perceived power of the polls
that has in recent years prompted the
development of "advocacy polling," which is
the use of polls by interest groups to create an
aura of strong popular support for their
favored positions. Typically this is achieved
by the employment of unrepresentative
samples, leading questions, or selective
reporting of results. Such "findings" merely
add to the sense of cacophony in national
polls and surveys.

The usual 3% warning represents the rounded
evaluation of the confidence interval for a
population proportion (p) of 0.50, at a
probability value of 0.95, when the sample is
of the relatively conventional size of 1500
cases. With progressively smaller samples the
error margins may be widened to four or five
percentage points, for the chief governor
precision for such estimates, comparable to
the resolving power of telescopes, is indeed
sample size. A three percentage point warning
for a sample of 1500 cases may in one sense
be seen as conservative, since the unrounded
solution is only [plus-or-minus]2.53
percentage points, and even this value takes
the error at its maximum (where p = 0.5):
once past very even divisions of the
population, the calculated error margin drops
below [plus-or-minus]2.50%.
http://www.stevetoner.com/handouts/Assessing_the_Accuracy_of_Polls_and_Surveys.pdf

What this says is that a sample size of 1500 generates a mean such that two standard deviations are are within 2.5% of the mean at a confidence interval of 95%. Generally, a sample size of 1000 generates two standard deviations of 3% from the mean. We would expect this as the standard deviation around the mean narrows as the sample size increases.

While I tend not to put much stock in polls in general for this very reason, as too often the sample data is too low and does not represent the true feelings of Americans within a poll. It would seem that those who support an issue as long as the poll supports it would have no reason to doubt it's accuracy. However, that does not mitigate the fact that this sample data is too low and as a matter of fact I can cite you a numerous cases of faulty polling data used as gospel in the past...

A new study on California’s Proposition 8 voting trends released Tuesday found that far fewer African-Americans voted to pass the gay marriage ban than the 70% suggested by exit polling and concluded that race was not the most significant factor affecting people’s vote for or against marriage equality.
Prop. 8 Exit Polling of African-Americans Way Off, Experts Say *|*News | Advocate.com

So regardless of these polling companies stated missions, in order to have a true accurate picture, you would need an averaged sample done over the course of time, if you were to use such a low number of people in a data pool and those people would have to be different each time as a representatative of the whole. Again, on a personal level I could care less what a poll says one way or the other, however in this case Toro I have to disagree with you.

There are a few things. First, any given poll may be wrong. With a confidence interval of 95%, that means that there is a 5% that the true mean of the population will be greater than 2 standard deviations from the sample mean, which in our case, is a poll. It may be that if the poll is statistically unbiased, then there is a 5% chance that it is inaccurate.

Second, polling assumes that the sample is unbiased. If there are construction problems, then, obviously, the poll is not. That is what happened with black voters in CA. That is what happened for the exit polls in 2004.

Finally, political polls do not necessarily reflect what will actually happen on election day. Elections are also driven by organization. In the 2006 Canadian election, all the polls on the last weekend of the vote had the Conservatives winning 34% of the vote. On the election, they won 38%. It is generally thought that this was because the Tories were better organized to get their vote out.

However, it has usually been my experience that those who dispute a poll's accuracy do so because they disagree with the outcome and it contradicts what they believe. That does not mean they are wrong, of course, but a person must ask themself that if it is the poll that is biased or if it is they who are unbiased. Usually, it is the person that is biased.

We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one Toro, while I believe the opposite is true, that people tend to point to polls as a source of evidence to back up a particular cause they happen to believe in even though that poll may be flawed , from the sample data, or perhaps the averaging, or based on any number of reasons. I have ample evidence to support my contention that polls generally do not reflect the will of those who participate in them but rather are a by-product of the sample questions, how many are in the poll as compared to the total number of people it effects. However, I will admit in the case of the healthcare debate I fall somewhere in the middle of debate, in that, I do not believe that Govt. is the best source for healthcare in this nation, but do believe that healthcare costs need to be brought under control in order to make it more affordable for those who need and want it. I say this only to be fair in this debate we are having as it applies to polls.

 

[toomuchtime_]

I never said it didn't need help, I said it was self funded - meaning it did not rely on the general tax revenues.

On a side note, speaking of re-building Medicare (or building a new system), the first step in making it fair and reasonable for all of us is for YOU to write YOUR CongressCritters and DEMAND that Federal Employees (including all CongressCritters) be participants in what ever health insurance system that they lay on the rest of us.

United States House of Representatives, 111th Congress, 1st Session

U.S. Senate

-Joe

In fact, it doesn't depend on revenues from its special tax, either. It has been charging artificially low taxes and premiums knowing that no matter how badly it mismanaged its finances, taxpayers would bail it out.

For most Americans the point is not to have a public plan regardless of how badly it will be mismanaged or how much it will ultimately cost. If they support it at all, it is because they believe they will get more for their money from it. But if a new public plan is configured as Medicare is, all of our experience tells us that it will be the beginning of a government monopoly on health insurance that will either raise our health insurance premiums, raise our taxes, increase our deficits every year or reduce our coverage.

I'm not following you regarding the "taxpayers will bail it out" thing.

If it is a program that is funded by a special tax, then that is what it is - tax payers pay for it because its a tax. We are not going to raise general revenue tax on ourselves to 'bail out' a program funded by a dedicated tax... if needed we would just raise the special tax that funds the program in the first place.

Please be careful how you throw around phrases like "all of our experience tells us that it will be the beginning of a government monopoly" without backing that up with a few examples of those experiences. As far as I can ascertain, we are in fairly uncharted water here, with the possible exception of Social Security, and that program is extremely efficiently run at less than 1% of FICA taxes being spent on all overhead, and by no means can it be spun as a 'monopoly' on retirement and disability programs.

-Joe

In eight years the Medicare trust fund will be empty and the Medicare tax and the premiums those on Medicare pay will be far short of Medicare's current expenses. All current expenses will have to be paid immediately from current revenues, and as our population continues to age, there will be fewer and fewer workers paying the medical costs of more and more seniors. Politicians in Washington will be faced with the either large middle class tax increase, the Medicare tax, a large increase in the premiums seniors pay or funding a part of the cost through deficit spending or other taxes on the general public.

Had Medicare been responsibly managed, in eight years, Medicare's current liabilities would have been funded over a period of years and the full weight of them would not have to fall on those who are then working - that was the purpose of the trust fund - but the politicians who now want us to trust them to run another public plan irresponsibly kept Medicare taxes artificially low for political reasons for years, so that in eight years, Medicare won't be an insurance program at all; it will just be a tax on working Americans to pay the current healthcare costs of retired Americans.

If a new public plan is configured as Medicare is, where the government can simply pay for it with tax increases or deficit spending if it goes broke as Medicare is about to do, then it will likely charge artificially low rates to attract customers and that will drive all the private sector competition out of business; hence a government monopoly on health insurance.

However if it is configured as a real insurance company is and has to live or die on its premiums and investment income, then not only won't it become a monopoly, it probably won't even survive, because to compete with private insurance companies, it will have to hire marketing and advertising executives and staffs and if they want good ones, they will have to pay salaries competitive with what private companies are paying, and that will drive their overhead costs up close to those of private companies. In addition, if the plan invests its reserves in Treasuries, as other government trusts are in invested, it will earn less income that private companies earn and it will have to make the difference up with higher premiums. On the other hand, if it invests its reserves in the private sector, it will have to hire portfolio managers, and if it wants good ones, it will have to pay what private insurance companies pay, driving the plan's overhead costs up still further.

So if the government is committed to allowing a public plan to fail if it charges too little to cover expenses, then its costs would be very similar to a private plan's costs, and few private insurance companies would worry about it. On the other hand, if the government would bail it out if it charged too little to cover its expenses, as Medicare has, then it would charge artificially low rates and drive private companies out of business, and there would be a government monopoly on health insurance.

 

[alan1]

So the assumption is that in this broad cross section, a contruction worker represents the interests of ALL contruction workers, a soldier a soldier, a Doctor a Doctor, a housewife a housewife? That is why the data in flawed from the start in such a low number of people questioned, because it makes assumptions based on the person(s) taking the poll. In order for this poll to be accurate it has to contain a much larger number of people to have a true reflection as to the feelings of most Americans. Let me cite you an example, I can during an election cycle poll 895 people and come out with an opinion that will tell me mickey mouse will be the next president of the United States if I question the right people and use a low enough number of people to represent the intentions of ALL the voters. In short this poll is flawed based on the following, the poll sample represents the intentions of exactly .00000385ths of Americans and even if you used a factor of 20 or 19 the data is still flawed because the poll sample number is too low. This poll while interesting is meaningless, because it represents the interests of less than 1% of the people that need, want, or have healthcare.

Most national polls have a sample of around 1,000 people that are accurate within 3% of the sample and a confidence interval of 95%. In English, that means given any specific poll at any given time, we expect it to be accurate within 3% 19 times out of 20.

Let's look at the last Presidential election. The final results for the popular vote was Obama 53%, McCain 46%.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2008 - General Election: McCain vs. Obama

So, the confidence interval tells us we would expect Obama to receive 50% to 56% of the vote 19 times out of 20 and McCain to receive between 49% and 43% 19 times out of 20.

What actually happened in the election? Here are the polls on the last days of the election.

RealClearPolitics - Election 2008 - Latest Polls

There were 15 polls on the last weekend of the election. Every poll had Obama between 50% and 55%. Every poll had McCain between 48% and 42%. So the polls were pretty accurate even though the typical poll had about 1,000 respondents.

If you averaged out the polls, Obama was at 52.1% but received 52.9% while McCain was at 44.5% and received 45.6%. We would expect the average to be closer given that the 15 polls account for a population sample of around 20,000 (out of 300 million).

So, yeah, 1,000 people is usually a pretty fair assessment of the national mood. Political parties don't pay pollsters millions of dollars for nothing. There are many reasons to be skeptical about this poll, but generally, the methodological construction is probably not one of them.

A few interesting things about this health care poll.

Only 24% of the people polled identified themselves as republican, yet McCain received 45.6% of the vote. (MM note: Seems republicans were under-represented. I think 36% of registered voters are registered as republicans)

Only 43% of the people said they would be willing to $500 more in taxes to provide this health care package to everybody. (MM note: $500 is only about 1 month of health insurance for a single person)

77% of the people said that under their current medical plan, basic medical treatments are affordable.

72% of the people said they have health insurance through employment/union or self.

77% of the people are either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the health care they currently receive.

The entire poll can be found here, http://www.cbsnews.com/htdocs/pdf/CBSPOLL_June09a_health_care.pdf?tag=contentMain;contentBody

 

[Chris]

Our current health insurance is a scam. I dropped mine long ago.

I am going to enjoy watching this awful system fail.

 

[elvis]

Our current health insurance is a scam. I dropped mine long ago.

I am going to enjoy watching this awful system fail.

You dropped yours? Good, you little parasite. I hope you need an operation and lose every Goddamned penny you've scammed out of those veterans you fucked over.

 

[Chris]

Our current health insurance is a scam. I dropped mine long ago.

I am going to enjoy watching this awful system fail.

You dropped yours? Good, you little parasite. I hope you need an operation and lose every Goddamned penny you've scammed out of those veterans you fucked over.

I am sorry for how you were abused as a child.

Seek help.

 

[Skull Pilot]

Our current health insurance is a scam. I dropped mine long ago.

I am going to enjoy watching this awful system fail.

so in the inaccurate government figures you are one of the 46 million uninsured even though you chose to not buy health insurance.

 

[editec]

Obviously a poll worded in such as way that it is designed to elite a certain response is worthless.

Nevertheless it doesn't take a huge population to get a valid poll if it is done correctly.

FWIW I seldom pay attention to polls since so many of them are designed not to really guage true sentiment, but designed to get an outcome so that its designers can make the 6 o'cock news with a bumpersticker headline.

I just wonder why 28% want the status quo.

Possibly because many of them have (or think they have until their insurance really gets tested) health care coverage they're satisfied with?