Health Care: Polls and Public Options Tuesday
The September Kaiser Health Tracking Poll is out and finds support for health care reform rebounding from a summer dip, even as the Senate Finance Committee can’t seem to agree on what the heck should be in or out of its legislation for it to advance to the Senate floor.
(Don’t bother trying to find out information from the committee’s website, however; it’s just about the worst communications tool I’ve seen. Why doesn’t Chairman Baucus exercise his public option to use his chairmanship’s no doubt significant public dollars to build out a functional website to help the public understand how it will be impacted by this important legislation? Legislation that still, thanks to Baucus’s votes today, does not include a public option?)
The details of the Kaiser poll are here, although it does not appear that senators are all that much influenced by what options the public wants as part of health care. Which brings me back to my oft-asked question: Is the Senate really working for the public?
(Also, numbers guy Nate Silver runs through today’s votes and what they might mean for the fate of the public option in the Senate, at least at this early stage. I know, it doesn’t seem early … )