The Healthcare Debate is Being Lost Due to Poor Communication

My favorite political blog, FiveThirtyEight.com, just posted a great piece about how most people don’t know what the “public option” is. It’s quite sad, and it’s also the reason the Obama administration is completely losing this battle.

The public option is simply a government-backed health insurance plan that people can purchase from if they can’t afford other private insurance. That’s it. It’s an option for those who can’t or don’t want to use existing solutions.

And guess what? When people were polled on that question, i.e.:

Starting a new federal health insurance plan that individuals could purchase if they can’t afford private plans offered to them.

…79% percent of people (including 61% of Republicans) said they were for it.

So the problem here is the lack of clear communication of what’s being proposed. There is far too much noise in this signal. It’s true that the opposition is trying desperately to inject noise themselves, but this wouldn’t be nearly as effective if those in charge of the message were pushing more signal. ::