[big campaign] ThinkProgress: Poll Confirms Massachusetts Election Was Not A Rejection Of Health Care Reform

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http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/25/mass-health-care/ Poll Confirms Massachusetts Election Was Not A Rejection Of Health Care Reform <http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/25/mass-health-care/> <http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/brown.gif> Following the surprise victory <http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/19/brown-wins/> of Sen.-elect Scott Brown (R-MA) in last week's special election, conservatives have attempted to paint <http://rawstory.com/2010/01/mcconnell-mass-race-a-referendum-on-health- care/> the election as a rejection of healthcare reform and progressive policies more generally. Appearing on ABC's This Week yesterday, Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) said, "what happened in Massachusetts" shows that "people are alarmed and angry about the spending, the debt, the government takeovers <http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-obama-adviser-david-axel rod-sens-jim/story?id=9636625&page=4> [including health care]." Conservative Washington Post columnist George Will said on This Week that Massachusetts "really was a health care election <http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/week-transcript-obama-adviser-david-axel rod-sens-jim/story?id=9636625&page=4> ." "This was a referendum on a particular piece of legislation that is the signature legislation of the administration, and the people of Massachusetts and the country are hotly angered over its substance," Will said. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), on Meet the Press yesterday, said, "the message in Massachusetts was absolutely clear <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35014151/ns/meet_the_press/page/2/> . The exit polls that I looked at said 48 percent of the people in Massachusetts said they voted for the new senator over health care." McConnell added: "The people are telling us, 'Please don't pass this bill.'" This "referendum" on health reform meme has become near-conventional wisom, with the media <http://mediamatters.org/research/201001190068> and even some Democrats <http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/20/brown-reform-referendum/> echoing it. But a new Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/WaPoKaiserHarvard_M assPoll_Jan22.pdf?sid=ST2010012203176> undermines this assertion. The poll suggests that while the election was a "protest of the Washington process <http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/25/mass-poll-lesson/> ," it was not a rejection of progressive policy. Only 11 percent of voters, including 19 percent of Brown voters, want Brown to "stop the Democratic agenda <http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/WaPoKaiserHarvard_M assPoll_Jan22.pdf?sid=ST2010012203176> :" - 70 percent of voters think Brown should work with Democrats on health care reform, including 48 percent of Brown voters. - 52 percent of voters were enthusiastic/satisfied with Obama administration policies. - 44 percent of voters believe "the country as a whole" would be better off with health care reform, but 23 percent believe Massachusetts would be better off. - 68 percent of voters, including 51 percent of Brown voters approve of Massachusetts' health care reform. - 58 percent of all voters, including 37 percent of Brown voters, felt "dissatisfied/angry" with "the policies offered by the Republicans in Congress." A different poll, from Rasmussen Reports <http://mediamatters.org/research/201001190068> , cast doubt on the notion that Brown voters were primarily motivated by opposition to health care reform. The poll found that 52 percent of Brown voters said health care was their top issue, while an even greater percentage of people who voted for state Attorney General Martha Coakley (D) - 63 percent - placed it first. And as the Wonk Room's Igor Volsky noted, Brown "doesn't make a very convincing messenger <http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/20/brown-reform-referendum/> for opposing the policy behind health reform," considering he voted for <http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/20/brown-reform-referendum/> his state's health reform legislation in 2006. "He promised to be the 41st vote against reform because Massachusetts had already passed its own health reform bill, arguing that the state shouldn't pay for the national effort," Volsky added. More at the WonkRoom here <http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/25/mass-poll-lesson/> , here <http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/22/poll-support/> and here <http://wonkroom.thinkprogress.org/2010/01/20/brown-reform-referendum/> . ________________________________ From: Jeremy Funk Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 3:33 PM To: Jeremy Funk Subject: NEW POLL: MA special election no referendum on health insurance reform, President FYI - interesting findings from a bipartisan election eve survey in Massachusetts on behalf of Women's Voices Women Vote <http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/WVVWV-Mass-exits.pd f> (Lake Research Partners/American Viewpoint's survey reached 600 voters who said they intended to vote (called Jan. 18) or said they did vote (called Jan. 19) : * Forty-six (46%) of voters said their vote was mainly to show support for health care reform rather than to show opposition to it (35%). * Despite the depressed progressive turnout in [Tuesday's] election, a majority of voters (51%) still felt Obama and the Democrats are taking the country in the right direction. [ThinkProgress <http://thinkprogress.org/2010/01/20/exit-poll-of-mass/> ] ________________________________ From: Jeremy Funk Sent: Thursday, January 21, 2010 10:07 AM To: Jeremy Funk Subject: WashPost: "Brown's victory in Mass. senate race hardly a repudiation of health reform" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/20/AR201001 2005042.html?hpid=topnews Brown's victory in Mass. senate race hardly a repudiation of health reform By Alec MacGillis Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, January 21, 2010; A11 While many are describing the election to fill the late Edward M. Kennedy <http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Edward_M._Kennedy> 's Senate seat as a referendum <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/politicsglossary/legislative/referen dum/> on national health-care reform, the Republican candidate rode to victory on a message more nuanced than flat-out resistance to universal health coverage: Massachusetts residents, he said, already had insurance and should not have to pay for it elsewhere. Scott Brown, the Republican state senator who won a stunning upset in Tuesday's election, voted for the state's health-care legislation, which was signed by then-Gov. Mitt Romney <http://www.whorunsgov.com/Profiles/Mitt_Romney> (R) and has covered all but 3 percent of Massachusetts residents. That legislation became the basic model for national health-care legislation. Brown has not disavowed his support for the state's law, which retains majority backing in Massachusetts. Instead, he argued on the campaign trail that Massachusetts had taken care of its own uninsured, and it would not be in the state's interest to contribute to an effort to cover the uninsured nationwide. "We have insurance here in Massachusetts," he said in a campaign debate. "I'm not going to be subsidizing for the next three, five years, pick a number, subsidizing what other states have failed to do." In a news conference Wednesday, he said, "There are some very good things in the national plan that's being proposed, but if you look at -- and really almost in a parochial manner -- we need to look out for Massachusetts first. . . . The thing I'm hearing all throughout the state is, 'What about us?' " Brown's message underscores a little-noticed political dynamic in a country where rates of the uninsured vary widely, from Massachusetts to Texas, where 25 percent are uninsured. Seeking national universal coverage means sending money from states that have tried hard to expand coverage, mostly in the Northeast and Midwest, to states that have not, mostly in the South and West. Supporters of the national legislation say this transfer is an unfortunate but unavoidable aspect of expanding coverage. But, they argue, the nation is misinterpreting expressions of self-interest in Massachusetts as grand opposition to universal health insurance. "Massachusetts's reforms continue to be popular in Massachusetts -- sufficiently popular that Brown did not repudiate them," said Paul Starr, a Princeton public affairs professor. "Here is a state that has enacted a similar reform and it is popular. That should encourage people that if it's done at the national level, that it would work as policy, and that it would be popular." Conservative analysts disagree, saying the Massachusetts law has been less successful than advertised and that this helped motivate residents to cast a vote they knew would set back national reform. In a new report from the libertarian <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/politicsglossary/party-affiliated/Li bertarian-Party/> Cato Institute, Michael Cannon argues that the law has covered fewer people than state data suggest and that it has cost residents and businesses more than supporters say. "Things are not as hunky-dory as people have been saying," he said. Divining voters' motivation is difficult. In a Boston Globe poll taken in October, 59 percent of state voters said they supported the state law, a drop of 10 percentage points from the prior year, and only 11 percent said they wanted the law repealed. There were no exit polls <http://projects.washingtonpost.com/politicsglossary/election/exit-polls /> Tuesday to gauge voters' views on health-care reform. Federal programs often divert money from richer states to poorer ones, but the regional dynamic is more stark in health-care reform. As it stands, the federal government shares the cost of Medicaid coverage based on states' income, ranging from a 50-50 split in the richest states to 80 percent in the poorest. But under the legislation, that disparity could grow in a way that does not necessarily accord with state wealth. Many states, and not necessarily the poorest, set stringent terms for Medicaid eligibility, while others have eased entry. In Texas, parents qualify for Medicaid only if their family income is below $5,720, while in Virginia, the limit is $6,380. In Wisconsin, New Jersey, Maine, Minnesota, Illinois, Connecticut and the District of Columbia, the cutoff is $40,000 or higher. In Maryland, it is $25,500. The legislation would set a single standard for Medicaid eligibility, about $28,000 or $33,000 for a family, and the federal government would pay almost the entire cost of newly eligible people. That means that states with looser standards would continue to pay as much as half the cost for a broad swath of people that in other states would be paid for almost entirely by the federal government. This disparity, which would largely benefit Republican-leaning states, would be exacerbated if Congress decided to extend to other states a deal that the Senate gave Nebraska to fund the entire cost of covering newly eligible people. Both the House and Senate bills attempt to address this disparity: The Senate bill includes extra money for Massachusetts and Vermont; the House bill helps additional states, including New York. But John Holahan of the Urban Institute said Congress could have done more to even out the state-by-state impact. "It's really striking," he said. "The real beneficiaries of this are the states in the South and the West who are opposing health-care reform." Some health policy experts say that the legislation in Congress would help Massachusetts by starting to bring down health-care costs nationally and by supplementing the state's efforts with federal funding, which is less vulnerable during economic downturns than deficit-constrained state budgets. "The notion that 'we have ours so we don't need the feds' is wrong because the long-term viability is at the federal level," said Jonathan Gruber, an MIT economist and paid consultant to the Obama administration. But what voters heard instead, said Harvard health policy professor Robert Blendon, was Brown's message that the national bills would require Medicare cuts and taxes on some of their health insurance plans. The state reforms had been implemented during better economic times, without a dedicated tax increase and without involving Medicare. Brown "was pounding away: Massachusetts took care of its own, why are you asking them to pay all these taxes in a bad economic time?" Blendon said. www.americansunitedforchange.org <http://www.americansunitedforchange.org/> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Jeremy Funk, 202-470-5878 DATE: January 20, 2010 Lauren Weiner, 202-470-5870 Americans United for Change Statement on the Massachusetts Special Election "A Referendum on Health Care Reform This Was Not" * Rasmussen Reports <http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/elec tion_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/massachusetts/a_final_look_at_m assachusetts_election_night_poll> : "56% of Massachusetts voters named health care as the most important issue. That suggests it was a big issue, but Democrat Martha Coakley actually won among those voters by a 53% to 46% margin." * "Fifty-three percent (53%) approve of the way that Barack Obama has handled his job as President." <http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/elections2/elec tion_2010/election_2010_senate_elections/massachusetts/brown_wins_stunni ng_victory_in_massachusetts> Washington D.C. - Tom McMahon, Acting Executive Director of Americans United for Change, released the following statement in response to the results of Tuesday's special election in Massachusetts: "As much as Congressional Republicans wish it to be true, Scott Brown's electoral victory was not a referendum on President Obama or on health insurance reform. The reality they conveniently ignore is that the individual components of reform continue to receive substantial levels of public support - in Massachusetts and across the country - like putting an end to the insurance industry's unscrupulous practices of rescinding policies when people get sick or refusing coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. And that is why we have complete confidence Congress will move full speed ahead and deliver the President the strongest bill possible that holds the insurance industry accountable and guarantees the American people the quality, affordable health care they deserve. "However, there's no ignoring the anxiety and frustration expressed by many in Massachusetts over an economy still struggling to regain footing since entering the worst recession in generations. While this administration's actions helped pull the economy back from the brink of a depression and the President's economic recovery package continues to create new jobs every day, progress can't come soon enough for so many hurting families. "But if Congressional Republicans believe the American people's frustration can in any way be interpreted as nostalgia for the failed economic policies from the Bush era that got us into this mess - and if they think this electoral victory was a mandate to continue voting to protect the bottom line of the insurance industry, Wall Street, and energy companies - they would be sorely mistaken." -30- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the "big campaign" group. To post to this group, send to [email protected] To unsubscribe, send email to [email protected] E-mail [email protected] with questions or concerns This is a list of individuals. It is not affiliated with any group or organization.