According to this new poll in The New York Times, 72% of Americans favor the idea of a "public option" for health care. The question even wins (50% to 39%) among Republicans. A majority is even willing to pay some unspecified amount of higher taxes to ensure that all Americans have health care.
Of special interest is that "85 percent of respondents said the health care system needed to be fundamentally changed or completely rebuilt, [while] 77 percent said they were very or somewhat satisfied with the quality of their own care." I take all this to mean that most of us are rather happy with our doctors…and rather unhappy that certain friends and relatives don't have what we have.
So what we have here is a situation where a substantial majority of Americans believe something is important…and a lot of senators and congresspeople are resisting because they're in bed with lobbyists and the medical industry. It would be nice if the public dialogue on all this were framed a bit more in those terms.