Via Dr. Steve B comes news that a full 59 percent of doctors answer "support" to the question, "in principle, do you support or oppose government legislation to establish national health insurance?" This is up a full 10 points from 2002, when the question was last asked. Sadly, the normal caveats about health care polling all apply. We don't establish health plans in principle, we establish them with specifics. And that tends to be where you lose a lot of stakeholders, as the specifics often threaten to deprive them of revenue. Moreover, this is a very vague question. Steve thinks it's an endorsement of single payer, but it's rather unclear what's actually being agreed to here. Single payer? Socialized medicine? Private insurance paid for by the government? Who knows? That said, doctors regularly come into contact with Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA -- if those systems were really as bad as some like to pretend, you'd have something less than six-in-ten clamoring for broader government involvement. In the past, the American Medical Association has been a powerful opponent of reform. More recently, they've basically been silent. But if doctors were to actually organize in favor of change, it would be tremendously powerful. Constituencies who want to see reform need to be as aggressive as those who wish to block it.
