Big Government Is No Longer A Boogie Man

There is a recently released CNN/Opinion Research poll about health care that is getting some play around the web. The focus for a lot of people is on the question of who is more likely to attend a town hall meeting. It seems that people who disagree with President Obama's health care reform plan are more likely to go to a town hall than those who agree with his plan.

Now to me this is a no brainer when you think about it. These are townhall meetings, not campaign rallys so for the most part people feel who agree with his proposals don't feel like they need to be sold on it anymore.

On the other hand people who disagree with the proposal are probably more likely to want to go to a townhall and either voice their disapproval and or ask questions that maybe they haven't had answered before. Now supposedly people are using this to justify the disruptions going on at the townhalls of Democratic members of Congress, but we all realize by now, or should at least, that the people behind those disruptions are not honest brokers. They are people ginned up to go and make a scene not regular people who just want to voice displeasure or to get more information. You simply can't make an argument that what they are doing is a testament to wide spread outrage over the health reform efforts when its obvious that its yet another example of astroturfing by the GOP and the health care industry. And thankfully, finally, the Democratic poltiical machine is now prepared to expose these people for who they really are.

Well there is something else in the polling that actually caught my eye that I haven't seen other places so far. And its this question and more importantly the percentages on how people answered.

32. In any health care system, someone must make tough decisions that affect individual patients, such as which patients get certain treatments, when they get treated, and which treatments are ineffective or too expensive. If you had to choose, would you rather have those decisions made by people who work for insurance companies, or people who work for the government?


Insurance companies 40%
Government 40%
Mixed/both equal (vol.) 7%
No opinion 13%

You read that right folks. After months and months of cries of socialism from the right wing blogosphere. After day after day of Glen Beck crying. After speech after speech of Congressional Republicans yelling about a "government takeover" of health care. A whopping 40% of respondents, equal to those who prefer insurance companies, chose the big bad hairy government as whom they would prefer to make decisions about their health care treatments.

Break out the fainting couches folks, Republicans are gonna need them!