According to their recent poll on public approval of Obamacare, 44 percent of Americans support the legislation, and 54 do not. However, 16 percent don't support it because the law falls short of what they were hoping for. According to CNN:
Add that 16% to the 44% who say they favor the law and that means that six in ten either support the law or don't think it goes far enough. Or in other words, 60% are on the other side of the most vocal conservative critics of Obamacare.
These numbers are unsurprising. Repeatedly around 70 percent of Americans in polls indicate they favor some kind of government-run healthcare system. (For that matter, and as mentioned on this blog from time to time, Americans are usually in agreement on most major policy issues. See page 69 in my It's Not about Religion for a quick rundown.)
A common response to the polling data - among those who simply don't like the data - is the claim that one need only "look at Canada" to see the dismal failure awaiting a single-payer national health program. So let us look at Canada.
According to a 2009 Nanos Research public opinion report,
Fully 89.9 percent of Canadians support or somewhat support universal health care, and within those two response groups, the vast majority, 79.9 percent or four Canadians in five, give their unqualified endorsement, while another 10 percent are somewhat supportive. [link 2]
In an article last year, the Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail reported that
[An] online survey of 2,207 respondents by Leger Marketing found universal health care was almost universally loved [by Canadians], with 94 per cent calling it an important source of collective pride - including 74 per cent who called it 'very important.' [link 3]
A September 2009 article in Bloomberg opened with the following paragraph:
Opponents of overhauling U.S. health care argue that Canada shows what happens when government gets involved in medicine, saying the country is plagued by inferior treatment, rationing and months-long queues. The allegations are wrong by almost every measure.... [link 4]
The more one looks at Canada, the more a different Canada emerges.
The CNN article mentions that "many Democrats wanted nothing less than a single-payer system and were extremely disappointed when that approach was not part of the new law." Right. Because their party gutted the legislation and went with a Republican initiative instead.
The division between the (basically unified) population and the (basically unified) government is quite clear, but successfully kept from view.
[1] http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/30/cnn-poll-gives-ammunition-to-both-sides-in-health-care-battle
[2] http://www.nanosresearch.com/library/polls/POLNAT-S09-T394E.pdf
[3] http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/universal-health-care-much-loved-among-canadians-monarchy-less-important-poll/article5640454
[4] http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a_zs1Y1FspIM
