NBC's flawed health care misperception poll

NBC released a health care poll (PDF) last night that deputy political director Mark Murray summarized in an article with the subhed "Misperceptions abound on president's health overhaul initiative":

Majorities in the poll believe the plans would give health insurance coverage to illegal immigrants; would lead to a government takeover of the health system; and would use taxpayer dollars to pay for women to have abortions — all claims that nonpartisan fact-checkers say are untrue about the legislation that has emerged so far from Congress.

Forty-five percent think the reform proposals would allow the government to make decisions about when to stop providing medical care for the elderly.

That also is untrue: The provision in the House legislation that critics have seized on — raising the specter of “death panels” or euthanasia — would simply allow Medicare to pay doctors for end-of-life counseling, if the patient wishes.

While it's great to see major news organizations polling on misperceptions, the wording of the NBC poll questions means that we can't draw sharp conclusions about the extent to which the public has mistaken beliefs about the actual contents of the legislation before Congress.

Here is the relevant segment of the poll results with question wording:

The problem is that NBC asked respondents if various results were "likely to happen" under the proposed health care plan, a vague phrase that allows for the implausible but increasingly popular fallback position that the provisions in question are not in the plan but will somehow result from it in practice. (See, for instance, Rudy Giuliani's defense of the "death panels" myth.) It would have been preferable to first ask respondents what provisions they thought were part of the legislation and then to ask if they think "death panels" and other doomsday scenarios would be the eventual result.

(Cross-posted to Pollster.com)

Comments

[Rob]

Civil libertarian Nat Hentoff weighs in.

[David]

Asking what results are likely to happen rather than asking about the contents of a particular bill, is not a bug; it's a feature.

When the goal is to have statements that are unabiguously true or false, it's convenient to have a list of truths. E.g., actuarial examinations contain questions asking whether certain items are on a particular list in the readings.

The contents of a particular bill can serve as such a list. A given provision is either in or not in a particular bill. So, it's convenient for Brendan to evaluate comments and beliefs based on the provisions of a particular bill.

OTOH the American public is concerned about what will actually happen to their health care. So, it makes more sense to ask what's likely to happen. When writing actuarial exams we avoided questions like this, because there was no clear-cut right answer.

Earlier comments have pointed out some reasons why the current contents of a particular bill are an insufficient guide to what health care will ultimately look like:

-- amendments to the various bills
-- modifications during House-Senate reconciiliation
-- subsequent laws related to health care
-- judicial decisions
-- economic considerations will force changes
-- Robert Reich's point that the current bills don't even pretend to be concrete proposals.

P.S. The fact that we don't know what's going to happen is itself an argument against Health Care Reform. We're buying a pig in a poke.

[Rob]

You can't make this stuff up. President Obama, in a call to one thousand rabbis yesterday, stated, "We are God's partners in matters of life and death," and noted that the period between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is when it's decided "who shall live and who shall die."

What's worse than a bureaucrat deciding who shall receive life-saving treatment and who shall not? A bureaucrat who believes he's acting as God's partner.