The Will Of The People

Steve Benen checks out Sunday's NYTimes/CBS poll on health care reform.

An NBC/WSJ poll released the other day found that 76% of Americans believe it's either "extremely important" or "quite important" to "give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance."

The wording of that question was a little awkward, though. The results from the latest NYT poll are even more encouraging.

Americans overwhelmingly support substantial changes to the health care system and are strongly behind one of the most contentious proposals Congress is considering, a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The poll found that most Americans would be willing to pay higher taxes so everyone could have health insurance and that they said the government could do a better job of holding down health-care costs than the private sector.

Respondents were asked, "Would you favor or oppose the government's offering everyone a government administered health insurance plan like Medicare that would compete with private health insurance plans?" It wasn't even close -- 72% supported the public option. Among Republicans, the ones who are supposed to find the very idea of a public plan so outrageous, 50% favor the same policy idea.

Even half of Republican voters want a public option, not to mention an overwhelming 87% of Democrats and 73% of independent voters. At what point do our elected representatives actually listen to the will of the people instead of the lobbyists who legally bribe them daily?

[UPDATE] Nate Silver crunches the numbers on the various public option support polls and finds that yes, America does want a public health care insurance option.