Over at Change.gov they are taking questions - a LOT of questions. Being interested in the healthcare issue (fortunately you can filter the questions by issue) and a single-payer supporter I thought it might be interesting to see how many questions were pointedly of a single-payer bent.
Before the statistics police arrest me, let me state that this is a completely informal study. Hopefully somebody might be inspired to get a little more scientific about it, I simply don't have the background.
But let's see what I did find, shall we?
I decided, after clicking through a dozen or so randomly(?) selected questions (the big bold ones they put at the top of the list), that I could probably realistically divide the questions into about five categories.
The first, which constitutes the majority of questions but is not of great interest to me since it has little to do with the actual financing of healthcare, is
DELIVERY (17 of 52): some sample questions below
"Supposed studies on vaccines safety are conducted by organizations that sell the product. When will the government conduct studies on vaccines that truly answer parents questions regarding a risky medical intervention for their children?"
"Will this administration give equal attention to complementary forms of medicine (note i did not say alternative) such as acupuncture which can help toward wellness rather than just focusing on allopathic medicine"
A lot of questions regarding doubts about medical practice and delivery, alternative practices, and so forth. Little to do with the actual financing.
The second category, of even lesser relevance to my question, is
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING TO DO WITH $ OR NOT A QUESTION (6 of 52):
for example:
"How can we have a rational health policy without integrating in it a pro-health agricultural (Food)policy? How would Universal health care be a solution if we continue to condone food production methods that lead to poisoning our bodies/planet?"
"Mr. Obama, are you going to set an example for millions of Americans and STOP SMOKING??"
"There seems to be a lot of concern about the health and welfare of the children around the world. After teaching in the inner city for many years I have found our children have the same problems here in the United States."
These can be entertaining and somewhat OT, and you could certainly tease a question out of the ones that don't come with a question mark, but in general they are of little interest to my question.
Now to the meat of the matter. I classify the remaining questions into three categories: single-payer, other system, and either system. By this I mean the questioner obviously has in mind a solution that is single-payer centric, mixed public/private or purely private insurance based, or the question could apply to either type of system. Here's what I got:
SINGLE-PAYER (11 of 52): some sample questions below
"Will you consider a single payer system like Medicare to provide healthcare to all? The Medicare Advantage plans are reaping millions in tax breaks from the government. This money should be used to invest in a single payer system."
"Why can we not just expand medicare to all?"
"47 million people without health care in the USA is shameful. Why can't we adopt a single payer system? I would like my health care to be determined by my physician and not my insurance company."
mixed public/private (this one was very hard to find questions that clearly or implicitly called for the retention of private insurance in the mix, but I decided to err on the side of not supporting my cause)
OTHER SYSTEM (8 of 52): some sample questions below
"can we re-evaluate where the majority of health care profits go to, it seems the patient is being over billed and under served by the current system?"
"Will health care reform address efficiency of delivery in addition to broader access? Why should we spend a greater % of our GDP on health care but have mediocre results?"
and either one
EITHER SYSTEM (10 of 52): some sample questions below
"From my experience, "health insurance" companies are in business to collect premiums, not to provide service. Will the Obama administration defy the power of organized health insurance lobbies and institute true universal health care?"
"Do "for profit" insurance companies and similar entities have a role to play in your plan for universal health care coverage? If so, what kind of role? Do you expect them to be phased out?"
Here's an interesting one to categorize:
"One problem with single payer healthcare is when you need a transplant or donor operation/organ, how will this play out. The other countries have a waiting list, here are only so many surgeries done per day, per doctor. Modifications are needed."
Is it a single-payer advocate wishing for an improvement to the system, or a single-payer antagonist pointing out the potential weaknesses? I would think it's the former due to the last sentence.
I also did a search on "single payer" which fortunately appeared to capture all of the variations, including misspellings. At the time of my search (6:45 PST on 1/1/09) there was a total of 8710 questions related to healthcare in general. There was no total reported for questions containing my search string, and while attempting to click through to the end of the list I received a yellow-background message that said
UNKNOWN SERVER ERROR
Were they on to me? I got up to exactly 800 before the error stopped my progress. If I searched on other terms (like "national health care") I would probably capture more single-payer questions. But I'm lazy and I'm not sure what any of this is telling me other than there are a hell of a lot of very pointed single-payer questions.
What to conclude? (Statisticians, your mother's are on the phone)
It would appear that single-payer is playing a significant, if not dominant role in this change.gov bid for input. If we split the "either system" fifty fifty between "single-payer" and "other system", and throw out the first two categories, single-payer is dominating 16:13 or about 55% to 45%. Hmmm...