Americans Really Do Like Government Services

Sarah Kliff calls a recent poll showing Americans actually want more government health services as "unexpected."

Not sure why should would say something like that.  Maybe her editors added that word.  The same applies to the Affordable Care Act as well.  Taken as a whole the policy is not popular. But if you break it up and sample aspects of the law it gets much higher marks.

For instance, the public overwhelmingly supports a law that bans insurance companies from discriminating against preexisting conditions.  Well, the ACA does just that.  The public overwhelmingly supports allowing children onto parent's health plans until 26 years of age. Guess what?  ACA makes that happen.  Frame it all up into one big package and the ACA is 20 points more popular than George Bush but still doesn't have majority approval.

Maybe a better way of putting this is by saying Americans really do like government services, whether they realize it's a government program or not. Social Security, Medicare, Earned Income Tax credit all get really high approval ratings from the public.  Just check it out:

What skews the polling data is when services are made a partisan issue.  Like portraying the ACA as having death panels that will kill undesirables, or saying that it's socialism designed at destroying America are the things that really confuse people.