The New Health Dialogue

Talking about the polling on health reform is like reviewing a Demi Moore film. Sure it's sort of fun to watch, but at the end of the day what's the point?

Depending on where you stand, you can find a poll to back up your position and a spin to dispute your opponent's.

If you’re the chairman of the Republican National Committee, for example, then recent polls showing declining presidential approval ratings and increasing opposition to reform are cause for rejoice. In just a few months you’ll be decking the halls of Congress with pink slips for Members who voted for “aye” on passage.

If you’re the White House Chief of Staff, such talk is on par with sugar plum fairies. The polls are an aberration, like the August town halls. The only way to avoid a day after Christmas fire sale in Congress on par with the midterms of 1994 is to pass reform. Besides, not all the polls are bad.

Handicapping political horse races is more difficult than betting on Ivy League Basketball (Our advice? Don’t bet against Cornell…), but there are two things to consider when looking at how health reform will impact the 2010 midterm elections.

First, as a new memo from the Mellman Group argues, polls showing growing opposition to reform may overstate their case because they include individuals who do not think the legislation went far enough (as much as 12 percent of opposition in a recent AP poll).

Second, while on the surface, support for reform has fluctuated, the public’s underlying approval of reform’s main provisions has remained consistent and strong. A recent survey from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that close to 82 percent of respondents believed an overhaul of the nation's health care system was important to fixing the economy. Furthermore, as the Mellman report notes, when the details of the bill are actually described to voters, opposition changes to support.

For these reasons, we tend to discount claims that health reform will become a political albatross for the Democrats. As Sen. Chuck Schumer argued recently:

When people see what is in this bill and when people see what it does, they will come around. The reason people are negative is not the substance of the bill, but the fears that the opponents have laid out. When those fears don't materialize, and people see the good in the bill, the numbers are going to go up.

While the nightmare caricature of reform --  death panels, rationing and socialized medicine --will never materialize, it’s also true the real benefits of reform (e.g. insurance regulations, subsidies, exchanges) may take a while to materialize. Which means in the short term Democrats will have little time to celebrate. “We can't just pass it,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake told the Chicago Tribune. “People aren't going to know what happened. So we have to sell the plan.”

Maybe Demi Moore is available.