The salient fact about health insurance in the United States is not that 15 percent don't have it. It's that 85 percent do. That's not generally been true for reformers who think much more about the uninsured than the insured. But it's doubly true in politics, as the uninsured come from subgroups (the poor, the young) that are less likely to vote. "Look," one of the President's senior health advisers said to me earlier this week, "95 percent of the people who voted for Obama had health insurance. We need to think about what we're doing for them."That's why the first three health care principles in Obama's budget speak to the concerns of the insured: Choice, affordability, security. But In his latest column at the Kaiser Family Foundation, Drew Altman suggests a metric we should we be watching to see if they're successful. Polls, he notes, generally ask whether you think health reform will make your family better off. Kaiser recently ran one such survey and the results were moderately encouraging:
Altman notes that these numbers are better than anything Clinton enjoyed. "A poll conducted by Time/CNN/Yankelovich in September 1993 -- just before the Clinton health plan was formally introduced -- found the public much more conflicted than today, with 20% saying they thought the plan would make them and their family better off, 21% saying they would be worse off, and 57% believing they would unaffected. By that point, many interest groups had already started to mobilize against the plan. As the debate over the Clinton plan intensified, support for the plan fell as more people grew to believe -- rightly or wrongly -- that they would end up worse off. In less than a year the percentage of people who said the plan would make them worse off rose from a low of 21% in one poll to 37% in another." That said, September 2009 is still a long time away. Republicans and interest groups don't yet have a specific plan to batter. Eventually, they will. And when that happens, Altman's right, the swings in this polling question will probably decide whether the legislation lives or dies.
Altman notes that these numbers are better than anything Clinton enjoyed. "A poll conducted by Time/CNN/Yankelovich in September 1993 -- just before the Clinton health plan was formally introduced -- found the public much more conflicted than today, with 20% saying they thought the plan would make them and their family better off, 21% saying they would be worse off, and 57% believing they would unaffected. By that point, many interest groups had already started to mobilize against the plan. As the debate over the Clinton plan intensified, support for the plan fell as more people grew to believe -- rightly or wrongly -- that they would end up worse off. In less than a year the percentage of people who said the plan would make them worse off rose from a low of 21% in one poll to 37% in another." That said, September 2009 is still a long time away. Republicans and interest groups don't yet have a specific plan to batter. Eventually, they will. And when that happens, Altman's right, the swings in this polling question will probably decide whether the legislation lives or dies. 
