Cost aside, which the Congressional Budget Office has already proclaimed to be unsustainable, Americans do not want the government making their medical decisions for them or being in control of what their options would be.
In a nation where freedom is guarded closely, Americans do not want to see those freedoms taken from them, especially in the area of their health.
Before the August vacations our politicians take, Barack Obama tried to push, very hard, to get Congress and the Senate to jam through his healthcare proposal aka Obamacare, insisting the public option be part of it.
It didn't happen, which has given the public a chance to read up and learn what is in the bill that would forever change the healthcare system in America, and it seems by latest polls, Americans are opposing that one element that the president wants so badly.
People are turning up at townhall meetings across America to oppose it, they are speaking up and refusing to allow the Democratic politicians simply run a townhall that is nothing more than an Obamacare infomercial, they are insisting, loudly at times, that their questions be answered and their opposition be heard to the single payer/public option.
Rasmussens latest poll shows 52 percent of American voters oppose the single payer plan, with only 32 percent favoring it.
Thirty-two percent (32%) of voters nationwide favor a single-payer health care system where the federal government provides coverage for everyone. A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 57% are opposed to a single-payer plan.
Fifty-two percent (52%) believe such a system would lead to a lower quality of care while 13% believe care would improve. Twenty-seven percent (27%) think that the quality of care would remain about the same.
Forty-five percent (45%) also say a single-payer system would lead to higher health care costs while 24% think lower costs would result. Nineteen percent (19%) think prices would remain about the same.
There's wide political disagreement over the single-payer issue. Sixty-two percent (62%) of Democrats favor a single-payer system, but 87% of Republicans are opposed to one. As for those not affiliated with either major party, 22% favor a single-payer approach while 63% are opposed.
That is the majority.
It is not surprising to see the breakdown along political lines, but what is important, and what Obama is completely ignoring, is the the sheer number of those unaffiliated with a political party that are opposed. 63 percent. Almost two thirds of Americans not thinking with a political mind and putting politics aside, simply do not want government in control of their healthcare.
What is Obama's response to the will of the people?
To go to more townhalls to defend his plan, instead of listening to the people, the majority, the voters, he plans to keep on pushing, even as the number of Americans oppose continue to rise, week after week in poll after poll.
Wall Street Journal headlines by calling Obama "tone-deaf" and they have a very good point.
The president shouldn’t worry about the protestors disrupting town hall meetings. He should worry about the Americans who have been sitting at home listening to him.
Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer, Barack Obama, Democrats and liberals all over may want to try to convince people that special interests and activist groups are behind the massive opposition to Obamacare at those often spoken about townhalls, with Pelosi and Hoyer claiming those proptesting Obamacare are "unamerican" in their method of protesting, but what about those being surveyed for poll after poll, saying they are opposed to the key element of Obamacare, which is the single payer, public option?
Those people are reading the bills, they are learning about what is in the bill, they are clearly opposed and there is no activist group behind them, they are every day, working American voters.
Opposed to Obamacare and Obama is ignoring them as if they didn't exist because HE prefers the single payer option.
Obama's previous statements, as shown in the video above, make it very clear he wants to eliminate private insurers and wants everyone on a public option/single payer healthcare system.
All the claims from him now, saying you can keep your insurance if you want to, no one will force you to take government healthcare, are smokescreens, once you lose your insurance plan (and employers will have no incentive to keep a private insurer), for whatever reason, you will be locked into his... period.
The president has a problem. For, despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country’s heart and character.
He seems unable to grasp what runs counter to its nature. That Americans don’t take well, for instance, to bullying, especially of the moralizing kind, implicit in those speeches on health care for everybody. Neither do they wish to be taken where they don’t know they want to go and being told it’s good for them.
Who would have believed that this politician celebrated, above all, for his eloquence and capacity to connect with voters would end up as president proving so profoundly tone deaf? A great many people is the answer—the same who listened to those speeches of his during the campaign, searching for their meaning.
It took this battle over health care to reveal the bloom coming off this rose, but that was coming. It began with the spectacle of the president, impelled to go abroad to apologize for his nation—repeatedly. It is not, in the end, the demonstrators in those town-hall meetings or the agitations of his political enemies that Mr. Obama should fear. It is the judgment of those Americans who have been sitting quietly in their homes, listening to him.
Listening, speaking up and those same Americans will be the people voting in the next elections.
[Update] Another Rasmussen report, not specific to the public option, but to the general Obamacare plan, shows 53 percent of Americans oppose the Obamacare plan itself.
Public support for the health care reform plan proposed by President Obama and congressional Democrats has fallen to a new low as just 42% of U.S. voters now favor the plan. That’s down five points from two weeks ago and down eight points from six weeks ago.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that opposition to the plan has increased to 53%, up nine points since late June.
More significantly, 44% of voters strongly oppose the health care reform effort versus 26% who strongly favor it. Intensity has been stronger among opponents of the plan since the debate began.
Is Barack Obama listening to the American public?
Not yet.
Will he?
Don't hold your breath.
.
