do people support health reform, or "health reform"

The issue: Kaiser Family Foundation's recent poll about Americans' knowledge of and opinions on healthcare reform

The vocab: If people are in favor of the idea of "healthcare reform" vs. if people are in favor of the specific provisions of healthcare reform

Not surprisingly, Americans are split pretty evenly on whether they support or oppose Obama's health reform bill - however, when respondents had the specific provisions of the proposed legislation explained to them, they generally supported healthcare overhaul more.

This month's Kaiser Family Foundation poll found that while only 42% of people said they supported the bill (and 41% oppose), there tended to be much higher rates of support when they were told about reform's specific aims. Here's an excerpt from Kaiser's press release:

"After hearing that tax credits would be available to small businesses that want to offer coverage to their employees, 73 percent said it made them more supportive of the legislation. Sixty-seven percent said they were more supportive when they heard that the legislation included health insurance exchanges, and 63 percent felt that way after being told that people could no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions. Sixty percent were more supportive after hearing that the legislation would help close the Medicare “doughnut hole” so that seniors would no longer face a period of having to pay the full cost of their medicines."

These findings suggest, basically, that while people tend to have opinions on a general abstract idea of "healthcare reform," these opinions may not reflect how they would feel about the legislation if they were more aware of its specific, tangible aims. Check out the numbers. (The full results I'm discussing start on page 9.) Not surprisingly, though, not every aspect of the bill was embraced by the public. People weren't so stoked about (1) the projected price tag, nor (2) the possibility of being mandated to have health insurance. Respondents said that they were less likely to support a bill with these provisions attached - but the way people would actually weigh these downfalls against the potential benefits wasn't surveyed.

Even though healthcare reform has been on the national agenda for almost a year now, the average American doesn't know a great deal about what changes could be imminent. Perhaps health reform advocates have been going about garnering public support all wrong. Senate democrats have been trying to convince people that health care reform is needed - but maybe all they really need to do is explain it.

The moral of this story is that lawmakers may be too hasty in using broad, abstract phrases like "health reform" and "healthcare overhaul" - the general public would be able to more accurately figure out their stance if the bill were explained in more specific terms. Maybe information about how the bill helps small businesses, Medicaid recipients and the millions of uninsured Americans will help people realize that they're actually in favor of the bill; maybe information about the cost of the program or about the anticipated date of full implementation (not until 2013) will help people realize that they're actually against the bill. But at this point, it seems like too many people are relying on party affiliations and inadequate information in forming their opinions - and not enough on their support of the actual makeup of the bill.