Lieberman Has Made Health Care Reform Unpopular

Sam Stein
HuffPost

By giving in to Sen. Joseph Lieberman's (I-Conn.) demands on health care legislation, Senate Democratic leadership may have moved closer to blocking a Republican filibuster. But they've also made reform far less popular.

Lieberman's insistence that a government-run insurance option (as well as a provision to expand Medicare) be stripped from the bill has moved Democrats and the White House towards the wrong side of public opinion.

In a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released on Wednesday, 45 percent of respondents said it was unacceptable to "no longer create a public health care plan administered by the federal government to compete directly with private health insurance companies". Only 42 percent said such a compromise was acceptable. Meanwhile, just 32 percent of people said the president's health care plan was now a "good idea" with 47 percent saying it was, in fact, a "bad idea" -- the highest percentage of detractors recorded.

"Most of the movement on the 'bad idea' comes from some of the president's core support groups, folks upset about lost public option," Chuck Todd, NBC political director and White House correspondent, tweeted.

(More here.)