When dingbat healthcare activists attack (Updated)

While spelunking the dripping caverns of the Fever Swamp (Comments From Left Field) today, I came across this little item shared by "mattbastard":

clipped from www.communitycounts.com Polls consistently show the majority of Americans strongly support a single-payer healthcare system. In a recent survey conducted by New York Times/CBS (1/11-15/09), respondents indicated they preferred a single-payer model 2 to 1 over a privatized system. Why then, is a single-payer model not being seriously considered and discussed as part of the major healthcare reform proposals under your administration?

Am I automatically suspicious of claims backed by polls? Pretty much.

I did my Pavlovian duty and checked for a New York Times/CBS poll for the appropriate time frame, and I believe I found it.

Then I looked for the public support of a single-payer system supposedly contained therein.

Not so much luck on that one. This is all I found:

92. Should the government in Washington provide national health insurance, or is this something that should be left only to private enterprise? IF GOVERNMENT, ASK: Should the government insurance be for all medical problems, or only for medical emergencies?

• 32 percent thought that health care should be left exclusively to private enterprise
• 9 percent answered DK/NA
  
• 49 percent of the total surveyed preferred the first answer to the second question

So what does this poll result mean? Not much, even if the results were not presented in such a ragtag manner. The wording of the first question seems to imply that only those who answered "government" were asked the second question, which means we are talking about a group that does not think that private enterprise should handle health care exclusively.

I'm not in favor of the private sector handling the insurance of all medical benefits, so I'd end up answering the second question in addition to the first. I wouldn't necessarily want the government insurance (to whatever degree it is used) to pay only for emergencies, so I suppose it ends up that I couldn't take that option. So, once I got through answering this poll, the dingbats at Community Counts would apparently assume that I favor a nationalized single-payer health insurance system if I allowed the poll to steer me toward the "government all" category. But hardly anything would be further from the truth.

I introduced these concerns over at CFLF. Let's see what happens (be forewarned: The CFLF crew are a potty-mouthed lot).



Update:

Sadly predictable! I had permitted myself false hope that the blunder would be acknowledged.

clipped from commentsfromleftfield.com

matttbastard on
March 23rd, 2009 9:14 pm

Sorry, trolling will get you nowhere, Bryan.

I don’t feed the desperately link-starved.

But thanks for the love, regardless.

Bryan on
March 24th, 2009 12:01 am

If I take the Web site URL away, will you take the criticism seriously?