"Daily Kos New NBC/WSJ poll: 76% of Americans want public option!"

Drdemocrat (Daily Kos):

Democratic Senators MUST beware. According to Chuck Todd, Americans will NOT feel that there is health care reform unless there is a public option in it. Also, like President Obama says, Americans do NOT want their health care benefits taxed.

http://online.wsj.com/...

-Obama's Approval 56% (was 61%)
-When told details of Obama's health care plan 55% favor, 35% opposed
-3/4 of Americans believe that the public option is extremely or quite important in health care reform

Overall good poll for Obama but of course not as good as it was in April before Obama had to make tough decisions such as bailing out GM, Gitmo, higher unemployment, etc.

What I found fascinating about this poll was the health care part:

On health care, the public remains open to persuasion. Without being told anything specific about the Obama plan in the survey, about a third of people said it's a good idea, about a third said it's a bad idea and the rest had no opinion. When given several details of his approach, 55% said they favored it, versus 35% who were opposed.

There was also support for the Democratic push to let people sign up for a public health-care plan that would compete with private companies, one of the toughest issues in the health-care debate. Three in four people said a public plan is extremely or quite important. But when told the arguments for and against the plan, a smaller portion, 47%, agreed with arguments in support of the plan, with 42% agreeing with the arguments against it.

At the same time, nearly half the participants said it was very or somewhat likely that their employer would drop private coverage if a public plan were available.

In terms of how to pay for health care reform, Americans do NOT like the Baucus/McCain plan of how to pay for it which is taxing health care benefits.

As for how to pay for the package, estimated at more than $1 trillion over 10 years, the public favors proposals to require all Americans to get insurance, to raise taxes on the rich and, to a lesser extent, to require all but the smallest businesses to offer insurance or pay into a fund.

But majorities oppose plans to tax health benefits, even if the taxes only apply to particularly generous plans. The public is divided about cuts to Medicare.

Chuck Todd said that the Democratic Senators are not reading polls correctly. He said that Americans will NOT feel that there is health care reform unless there is a public option.

IMO, what Obama needs to do is go out on the road and SELL his health care plan. In terms of health care, the Obama team isn't stupid. They know that the public option when explained is popular and they have also devised a way of paying for it without taxing people's health care benefits.

IMO, the fastest way of turning people off to Obama's health care plan is to tax it.

The bottom line is that Obama has a health care discussion on ABC next week. After that, Obama needs to go out on the road and sell this thing complete with public option and how they plan to pay for it.

Howie P.S.: Ed Schultz said (on the radio today!)that Democrats should "get their heads out of their and asses listen to the people" on this issue.