The Wall Street Journal and NBC did a poll on what people think the Obama healthcare plan will do. Here are the results:
None – zero, zip, zilch, nada – of the above concerns are true. Illegals will not get government coverage, there won’t be a government takeover, there won’t be tax-payer funded abortions and no one is going to kill your grandmother. It appears that Americans, despite conclusive evidence to the contrary, seem willing to believe the absolute worst.
Now here’ s the really shocking poll number. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling questioned residents of North Carolina and Virginia. The survey found that 62% of people believe Obama is an American citizen while 24% subscribe to the “birther” theory and believe he was born elsewhere.
Diving further into the numbers about the President and you get this:
That leaves 20%, which includes at least some people who correctly believe that Obama was born in Hawaii, but who don’t consider Hawaii to be part of the United States. You read that right- 6% of poll respondents think that Hawaii is not part of the country and 4% are unsure.
Umm…
Here’s another great one from the same poll. 39% of people want government to stay out of Medicare. 15% are unsure.
An uninformed public is nothing new. It is scary to stop and think that these people are also the ones voting people into the White House and Congress.
That said, both Obama and Congress are doing a horrendous job of educating the public about healthcare reform. There is massive confusion, no clear leader in the debate, and the politicians all have different stories.
The best we get from them are town hall meetings where a few hundred people show up. We need millions of people on the same page, and we need legislation that everyone can understand (at least in broad strokes).
I think you are right about Obama and Democrats deserving their fair share of the blame. The fact that there is no single bill to argue for allows these myths and lies to flourish.