The More You Know....

...the less attractive government-run health care becomes.

At least that seems to be the message from a recent Gallup poll asking people whether they believe providing health insurance is the responsibility of the federal government or not. Gallup has been polling this question since 2001, and for the first time ever the number of people opposed to government health insurance has surpassed the number in favor of it (50%-47%).

As recently as 2006, 69 percent of Americans felt that it was the government's responsibility to provide health coverage; last year that number fell to 54 percent, the previous low.

So why the dramatic shift?

"Certainly the federal government's role in the nation's health care system has been widely and vigorously debated over the last several months, including much focus on the "public option." These data suggest that one result of the debate has been a net decrease in Americans' agreement that ensuring all Americans have health care coverage is an appropriate role for the federal government."

Gallup concludes:

"The current poll results indicate that, with the renewed health care debate since President Obama took office, Americans have become less convinced that it is an appropriate goal for the federal government to take on the responsibility of ensuring that all Americans have health care coverage. It is possible that the current debate has increased the average American's awareness as to the nuances of the various roles the government could play in the health care system, helping make the generic "make sure all Americans have health care coverage" sound less appealing. Plus, the current debate may have produced more skepticism among Americans that the government's role in health care could or should be this broad."

I believe it was Socrates who said the truth can only be discovered through use of the dialectic. In other words, you don't know what you believe until you challenge it with an argument of some kind. It seems that the debates over health care are having one positive effect: convincing more people that government health care is a bad idea.

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