Bogged Down By Special Interest, Health Care Reform Becomes a Political Tool Instead of a People's Right

Dr. Erika Schwartz, 08.19.2009
Medical Director of Cinergy Health
Do not allow America to continue being manipulated by special interest groups and help the people of America understand that they must control their own fate.
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Pollster Behind Controversial Public Option Poll Has Long Ties To Insurance Industry
The Republican half of the bipartisan team of pollsters behind a new, controversial poll on health care has longstanding ties to the health insurance industry that critics say biased the results.
An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Tuesday, authored by Republican pollster Bill McInturff and Democratic pollster Peter Hart, showed a majority of respondents opposing a public option for insurance coverage. McInturff is one of the most respected pollsters in Washington, and his work is often treated as straightforward and honest. But the pollsters' decision to alter the language of their August survey has raised the eyebrows of industry observers.
Instead of asking whether people should be given a choice between a public and private plan -- as NBC/WSJ had done in its June 2009 survey -- the pollsters dropped the word "choice" in their July and August polls. In its place they asked whether people favored or opposed creating a public plan to compete with private insurers. Whereas two months ago, 76 percent of respondents said they felt it was either extremely or quite important to have a public option, in August that number was down to 43 percent.
"I think it's a very big deal to drop the word," said Wendell Potter, a former vice president at the insurance giant CIGNA. "This has been a strategy the industry has had for many years. They ask questions in many ways, knowing the way they are asking the questions will skew the result. Dropping the word choice is very important. It plays into some of the fears some of the people have been hearing lately, that the government would leave them without an option." LinkHere

NBC Changing Public Option Poll Question After Staggering Drop In Support

Critics who called out the NBC poll for excising the word "choice" from its question about a public option for health insurance will be happier by next month's survey, which will ask the question both with and without that key element.
Supporters of the public option were upset by Tuesday's survey which, after the language change, found support for a government-run alternative to private insurance down a staggering 33 percent, to 43 percent, in just two months.
NBC's White House correspondent Chuck Todd told the Huffington Post on Wednesday afternoon that pollsters Bill McInturff and Peter Hart will ask respondents two questions regarding the public plan for their September study.
The first: "Would you favor or oppose creating a public health care plan administered by the federal government that would compete directly with private health insurance companies?"
The second: "In any health care proposal, how important do you feel it is to give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance?"
The inclusion of both questions should provide an interesting window into how slight changes in messaging can (or don't) drastically alter the health care debate. The latter question, which emphasizes the idea of having something publicly run, was asked in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in June with 76 percent of respondents saying they felt it was either extremely or quite important to have a public option. The former question was asked in July and August, with 46 and 43 percent of respondents respectively saying they favored a public option.
Todd's decision to put both questions in the mix also should placate a host of progressive health care proponents who were critical of the NBC pollsters.
On Wednesday, Todd defended the decision to drop "choice" from the survey, calling the word a "trigger" that sent a certain "message" to respondents. And while he argued that the revised way of asking the question was "very neutral" he admitted that the idea of putting both options side by side was "something we wanted to test." LinkHere