Washington Post Poll Finds Strong Support for Public Option

Washington Post poll finds that people like the public option but insists on nonetheless dubbing it “controversial”:

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that support for a government-run health-care plan to compete with private insurers has rebounded from its summertime lows and wins clear majority support from the public.

Americans remain sharply divided about the overall packages moving closer to votes in Congress and President Obama’s leadership on the issue, reflecting the partisan battle that has raged for months over the administration’s top legislative priority. But sizable majorities back two key and controversial provisions: both the so-called public option and a new mandate that would require all Americans to carry health insurance.

Weird. That said, I think the main takeaway the deeper you bore into the poll is that (as usually) public opinion doesn’t have great grasp of policy detail:

Independents and senior citizens, two groups crucial to the debate, have warmed to the idea of a public option, and are particularly supportive if it would be administered by the states and limited to those without access to affordable private coverage.

What “administered” by the states would mean, exactly, is a bit hard to pin down. But creating 50 separate public options is a much worse idea than creating one (or a few) big ones. A public option just for California or New York or Texas might work okay, but a Vermont or Wyoming public option is going to be way to small to be effective. Insurance is about aggregating risks, you don’t want a plan that’s limited to a small fraction of the population of a small state.

The question the Post asked about making the public option “available only to people who did not have a choice of affordable private insurance” seems very ill-considered. On the one hand, in all the versions of health reform on the table the public option is limited to people who’d be participating in the health insurance exchange—which is to say people not eligible for Medicare or for employer-provided insurance. Then on the other hand, in all the versions of health reform on the table people participating in the exchange are eligible for federal subsidies to ensure the affordability of health insurance. So on one construction of making the public option “available only to people who did not have a choice of affordable private insurance” we’re not talking about modifying the standard public option plan at all. But on another construction of the phrase we’re talking about creating a public option that nobody would be eligible for.