Health Care Reform Sentiment – Beyond Missouri

The lesson here is that when pundits try to extrapolate national sentiment based on one state vote tally – like for Missouri’s Prop C initiative – this is bluster, not analysis.
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Not just pundits. This is the GOP platform, bluster, no facts, reason or sense.
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How long can an anti everything platform continue?

Kate Pickert math:
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600,000 Republicans voted as opposed to 300,000 Democrats.
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How did Ms Pickert define the 71% who voted to oppose the mandate?
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“There was almost no organized opposition to the measure and the various races in the state likely drew out more Republican voters.”

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Yes Ms Pickert, there were 50% more Republicans voting in this specific election, but where did the other 21% come from? The Moon? Mars?

The numbers do not tell us how many voters actually voted on the measure, or if they were Dem, or Rep. voters.
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It is possible to think that 21% came from the GOP itself.
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You have to think Rusty.

Also… twice as many Republicans voted as Democrats, not “50% more”. If you want to use a percentage, 100% more Republicans voted than Democrats.

Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw math stones.

Also…you are correct showtime45. I should have said that 2 times as many Republicans voted than Democrats, but 3 times as many people voted against the Healthcare mandate.
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Thank you for pointing that out.

“The lesson here is that when pundits try to extrapolate national sentiment based on one state vote tally – like for Missouri’s Prop C initiative – this is bluster, not analysis.”
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Any statistician worth his/her salt knows that a sample of 1 (state) is hardly a predictor of future behavior.

Why let a little simple math and reading comprehension get in the way of a good bias? Every slight victory for regressives is a triumph and every win for progressives is a math error. Truthiness trumps all.

“But the insurance requirement has been one of the most contentious parts of the new federal law. Public officials in well over a dozen states, including Missouri, have filed lawsuits claiming Congress overstepped its constitutional authority by requiring citizens to buy health insurance.”

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A dozen other States? Hmmmmm, and those are only the ones who have filed lawsuits, it doesn’t count the other dozen or so who are working on laws just like Missouri at this time.
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Imagine that!!
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http://apnews.myway.com/article/20100804/D9HCF3I80.html

OMG, that is like over 50% of the States who are actively seeking to repeal the Obamacare mandate. How does that fit exactly into your statistical data of future behavior???

Nonetheless, that such an initiative garnered 71% of the vote says much about the strength of opposition to the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.
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Yes, it tells us that Republican primary voters believe Republican propaganda. Oh noes!

Well, Rusty, its like this. You should know that here in PA, Corbet joined in the lawsuit against the Act in opposition of the governor and the legislature.

It doesn’t. Now tell me how that changes the statement that a sample of 1 is not valid. The point being made in the paragraph I highlighted refers to using the results of Missouri only as a National predictor.

Why we have healthcare, rather ObamaCare…..Why people voted against it in MO-land
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Yes indeed erieangel, and why I sent him $100 bucks to get elected as Governor!!

“Nonetheless, that such an initiative garnered 71% of the vote says much about the strength of opposition to the new Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”
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…in Missouri.

Well to be more exact, 66% of the voters in this measure were Republicans.
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Assuming that the Republicans voted as a unit, that means of the 300,000 Democrats who voted, about 45,000 of them (or 15% of the total number of Democrats) roughly voted against health care.
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So the news flash is: Missouri is as polarized as the rest of the country.

nfb: Come on, oppose it or support it, I imagine we can all agree on common sense. Shocker of all shockers: Republican leaning states are very against this and Democratic leaning states are very for it.
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It’s almost like they voted that way in the general election too.
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Like everything else in this country, roughly half of it hates what the other half of it likes.

Missouri is the tip of the iceberg. As this monstrosity of a bill unravels, you will find public sentiment growing even more angry and rightly so. The cost keeps rising and implementation, more and more unmanageable. This is a bureaucratic nightmare of unbelievable proportions and when small business owners start tackling the necessary paperwork, you will hear the outrage from one coast to the other. We, in the industry, are waiting for it to self destruct, as surely it will.

As this monstrosity of a bill unravels, you will find public sentiment growing even more angry and rightly so.
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Right, as long as you ignore all the polling evidence which says the exact opposite of what you claim.

898,784 votes were cast for Senate Primaries. 938.782 for prop C. That is 4.5% more voters voted on Prop C then on the Senate.
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I guess we will have to see who shows up at the polls in Nov, when there is no Prop C, Or will the pols invent one?

“I guess we will have to see who shows up at the polls in Nov, when there is no Prop C, Or will the pols invent one?”
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It may be too late for this cycle but I’ve been thinking that “English as the Official Language” ballot measure.
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They pretty much exhausted the “Defense of Marriage” measures to get their people to the polls and need something new.

Let’s see how anti-health care reform candidates are doing.
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– On August 3, Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox lost his bid for the Republican gubernatorial nomination, finishing a distant third place.
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– On June 8, South Carolina Attorney General Henry McMaster tanked in his gubernatorial bid and came in third with just 17 percent of the vote.
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– Also on June 8, Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons, who went so far as to usurp the state attorney general and enlist an all-volunteer cadre of lawyers in order to sue the federal government, was swamped in his re-election bid, garnering just 27 percent.
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– Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum, who was so eager to be the first attorney general to sue the federal government over health care that he filed suit seven minutes after the bill was signed into law, finds himself wallowing in the polls and faces an uphill battle in Florida’s August 24 primary.
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From http://thinkprogress.org/2010/08/04/cox-health-care-sue/

“Right, as long as you ignore all the polling evidence which says the exact opposite of what you claim.“

The Kaiser Family Foundation is the latest survey outlet to see positive movement on the health-care reform bill. In their May poll, 41 percent approved of the bill and 44 percent didn’t. Their June poll has flipped to 48 percent approval and 41 percent disapproval. That’s the fourth poll in a row to show improving numbers for the legislation: The AP and Gallup polls both flipped from plurality disapproval to plurality approval, and the NBC/WSJ poll registered a slight (2 percent, which is within the margin of error) improvement in the bill’s numbers, but remained at plurality disapproval.

Ignoring evidence that disproves their beliefs is without a doubt what Teatards do best.
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http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/2010/06/more_polls_show_health-care_re.html

How many of the Democrats who pushed healthcare reform through Congress retired???

Keep clutching those polls if it makes you feel better, but the REAL truth lies in the implementation of this bill. Costs are soaring (nobody yet knows how high they will go) paperwork requirements are an absolute nightmare, premiums will be increasing precipitously, new patients will find it harder to find a doctor and existing patients will be waiting MUCH longer to be seen. Yes, indeed, all of this really speaks to the popularity of this bill. As stated previously, Missouri is but the tip of the iceberg.

Costs are soaring (nobody yet knows how high they will go) paperwork requirements are an absolute nightmare…”
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…all before the law is even implemented. You can’t really have gotten through medical school, could you?

“Well to be more exact, 66% of the voters in this measure were Republicans.
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Assuming that the Republicans voted as a unit, that means of the 300,000 Democrats who voted, about 45,000 of them (or 15% of the total number of Democrats) roughly voted against health care.”
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Rusty’s math is atrocious, but yours is not much better. There is not enough information provided to know who voted for or against the measure. It’s possible that not a single Dem voted against health care and still end up with the result stated.

If 900,000 people voted and 600,000 were Republicans and 300,000 were Democrats….

That’s pretty simple math. Republicans made 66% of the electorate unless the rules of division have changed in the last few weeks.

Thus, if the total was 71% of total votes… I’d imagine at least a few Democrats had to vote for it.
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It’s also absurd to assume that the Republicans voted 100% against it.

“OMG, that is like over 50% of the States who are actively seeking to repeal the Obamacare mandate. How does that fit exactly into your statistical data of future behavior???”
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Actually, all that means is that there is a politician, usually the state’s Attorney General, who is interested in joining the lawsuit to oppose the law, rather than as a reflection of the feelings of the residents of that state. For instance, Cuccinelli is much further right than general population of Virginia, which Obama won in 2008, on a platform which included health care reform.

Maybe this is a technicality, but in an open primary you choose the ballot. You can be a Democrat and vote the Republican ballot and vice versa. So your simple comment that “600K *were* Republicans and 300K *were* Democrats” is not necessarily true. Those were just the ballots they cast.
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My only point is that you can’t make any conclusions about this vote, other than the proponents didn’t show up at the polls as much as the opponents, but the reason they went to the polls at all may not have much to do with health care (or maybe it was).

When analyzed,final cost of this bill, sheperd, keep escalating higher and higher…the end is not yet in sight. The lawyers at our University have been dissecting this bill for months now and they tell us it is a bureaucratic nightmare, almost impossible to manage. The individual physician will see their paperwork triple, at a minimum and yes, we do know that premiums will increase because we have already been put on notice by our underwriters. Just wait until it does get implemented and the public starts getting inconvenienced….the outrage will be deafening.

“…we do know that premiums will increase because we have already been put on notice by our underwriters.”
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No sh!t Sherlock. The point is, just like your nightmare paperwork, it’s happening now and has nothing to do with the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

In a briefing for reporters, WellPoint executives blamed their rate increases on rising medical costs and a pool of customers that is gradually becoming older and sicker, as younger, healthier people drop coverage. They insisted that their competitors are raising rates in much the same way…
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The HHS report found that the Anthem numbers are in line with increases sought by insurers in other states – at a time of robust profit growth for the companies and a lack of competition in most states.
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For example, Anthem in Maine was denied an 18.5 percent increase last year and is now requesting that state regulators approve a 23 percent rise. Maine is home to Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, Republican moderates whose support Obama would like to have for his health care legislation.
Story continues below
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Michigan’s Blue Cross Blue Shield plan requested approval for premium increases of 56 percent in 2009. And in the state of Washington, rates for some individual health plans increased by up to 40 percent until regulators cracked down.
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A Congressional Budget Office analysis last year found that the Senate Democrats’ bill would raise the average premium per person in the individual market by 10 percent to 13 percent, mainly because insurers would have to sell more comprehensive coverage. The government would pick up much of the tab, however. The majority of the people purchasing their own coverage would be eligible for assistance averaging two-thirds of the cost of their premiums.

Can you tell me which med school you went to. My dog needs a job and he can’t tell cause from effect either.

“The lesson here is that when pundits try to extrapolate national sentiment based on one state vote tally – like for Missouri’s Prop C initiative – this is bluster, not analysis.”

Bluster, not analysis. Kinda like this post?

With 71% of the vote a very ling time. You lose.

Deny all you want, sheperd, but many of the premium increases are tied to the impending implementation of HCR. Yes, the government will pick up the tab for lower income families, but what about middle America and small business owners? These same owners will be required to file so much paperwork, it is obscene. As I stated, you wait until the average American starts encountering major inconveniences, in the pocketbook, at the doctor’s office, trying to schedule surgery, or even FINDING a doctor and you can then gauge just how popular this bill is going to be. I am on the front line here, sheperd and I can tell you, what I am hearing and sensing, is full scale skepticism and downright anger. From both patients AND physicians.

“…many of the premium increases are tied to the impending implementation of HCR…”
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I call that pure, unadulterated, made-up bullsh!t but do provide a link if you think you can back it up.
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“I am on the front line here, sheperd and I can tell you, what I am hearing and sensing, is full scale skepticism and downright anger. From both patients AND physicians.”
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Small wonder. You just proved that even doctors can be as insanely partisan and misinformed about the HCR legislation as anyone else (it’s pretty shocking, really).

Results of a New Poll on HCR by FOX News / Opinion Dynamics

Do you approve or disapprove of the job Barack Obama is doing on Healthcare.

Approve….Disapprove….Don’t Know
…41%………….55%……………4

Voters who like the new health care law and think it should be implemented as is……………………15%
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Voters who don’t like the law in its current form and think it needs to be changed………………….. 42%
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Voters who would repeal it all together. ……………………………………………………..36%

The Current Real Clear Politics Summary of Polls Shows the following Results.
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New HCR Plan……Favor…..Against/Oppose

…………………………..37%………….51.8%
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For all the individuals who say HCR is growing in popularity with the American Public, you are wrong.
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If you look hard enough you may find one poll that might support your view but when you look at a summary of all polls it tell the true story.