Public Sends Conflicting Signals on Health Reform

(Feb. 25) -- Over the past year, President Barack Obama has been nothing if not determined to get the public behind him on health care reform.

In addition to the various town halls, rallies and speeches, the president hosted a health care summit last March, was on a prime-time ABC News special in June, held a prime-time news conference in July, delivered a major speech to Congress in early September, made a Sunday talk show blitz later in the month, talked up reform in his State of the Union speech in January and offered his own plan on Monday.

But despite all this salesmanship, opposition to health care reform steadily climbed. According to an average of polls by Pollster.com, opposition to reform went from 20 percent in March to more than 51 percent today.

Source: Pollster.com

A new Kaiser Family Foundation poll, meanwhile, finds that only 34 percent think reform will make them better off, and 58 percent think it will either make things worse or will make no difference. And only 32 percent say that Congress should pass the bills approved by the House and Senate. (Even among Democrats, only half say the current bills should be passed.)

Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll

But, oddly enough, when asked about specific parts of the health reform plan, most of those polled think they are either very or somewhat important.

Source: Kaiser Family Foundation Health Tracking Poll

Is that a failure to communicate? Is the public just turned off by the process? Or do Americans generally just not like the idea of putting all these reforms together in one mega-reform package? There simply aren't any clear answers to these questions.

What is clear is that Obama hopes the Thursday summit will finally be enough to get the American people to rethink their position on health care and close the sale with them. But given the mixed signals the public has been sending all year, that still seems like a long shot.