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Eric Cantor Thinks Health Care Polls Are Biased

10/21/2009, by Proloy Bhatta

HIGHLIGHTS

There's an uptick in support for the public option. 57% support versus 52% two months ago.
One poll suggested 76% support. Bias?
Eric Cantor believes that the public option will replace private health insurance so his claim is that all these polls are biased.

How questions are worded can produce appreciably different results.

Nobel Peace Prize

If you ask adults whether they believed Obama deserved to win the Nobel Peace Prize or whether he accomplished enough to win the award, there's a 10% swing. Look at these results from CNN.

CNN, 10/16-18/09

"As you may know, the Norwegian Nobel Committee recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize to Barack Obama. Do you approve or disapprove of that committee's decision to award the prize to Obama?"
Approve 42
Disapprove 56
Unsure 2

"Do you think Obama has accomplished enough so far to deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, or don't you think so?"
Enough 32
Don't Think So 67
Unsure 1

Just because someone believes Obama did not accomplish enough to win the award does not mean they don't approve of his winning it.

Health Care

I bring this up because of recent statements by one of the leading Republicans in Congress.

According to TheHill.com, Eric Cantor believes the polls on health care are flawed because they do not ask respondents how they feel about a public option replacing private health insurance. His charge is that the word "compete" is not correctly representing what the public option does.

On the contrary, there is no attempt by the Democrats to completely remove private health insurance plans so his charge is unfounded.

What we know for a fact is this. The polls are showing an uptick in support of the public option.

ABC News/Washington Post Poll. Oct. 15-18, 2009

"Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans?"

57% supported this and 42% opposed it. Two months ago: 52% supported it, 46% opposed it .

The poll question where I saw the most bias was:

"Would you support or oppose having the government create a new health insurance plan to compete with private health insurance plans?" If oppose or unsure: "What if this government-sponsored plan was run by state governments and was available only to people who did not have a choice of affordable private insurance? In that case would you support or oppose this idea?" Combined responses

If the sample said that they opposed or were unsure of their response, they were given ANOTHER question so that the percent support would be inflated.

Basically they are aggregating those that want a national sponsored plan without limits with those that want a state sponsored plan with limits. But you could only really have one or the other so aggregating their responses is inaccurate.

Nevertheless, 76% support this and 23% oppose this.

We wrote about bias in the wording of health care questions before, check out our article entitled "Wording is Key in Health Care Polling".