On the health care polling, Dan comments:
I'm not sure that the 90% thing is so strong. Take me as an example. I'm fairly young and healthy. (Upper 20s). My interaction with the health care system is the occasional check up. It's been fine.
However, my grandfather died shortly after heart surgery. His health care sucked. So I'm pretty motivated to see some reform even though I, personally, won't need to benefit from it for years (I hope). I wonder how many of those 90% are in a similar situation where they personally are ok because they don't use the system often, while they have older relatives that they know are in trouble.
That seems possible. You could argue there's a sort of concentric circles effect in health care, where the terrible experiences of a couple people will bias large numbers of family members, friends, and acquaintances in their social circle.
