Many of us who are in favor...

...of health care reform are frustrated that the bills before Congress don't have more support in public opinion polls. How can that be? When you ask people about its individual parts, they poll much better. The only answer is that the average American just doesn't understand what is in the bills. And that is due largely to a failure among President Obama and the Democrats to explain reform (and the Republicans' shameless demagoguing of the issue). But this interpretation is seen as hopelessly arrogant.

Eric Zorn, writing in the Chicago Tribune today, sheds some light on the problem:

A Kaiser Family Foundation poll released last month found that 58 percent of respondents either didn’t know or were unaware that the bills now in Congress would prohibit insurance companies from setting lifetime caps on coverage.
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Fifty-seven percent didn’t know the bills would require insurance companies to spend at least 80 percent of what they take in on health care; 56 percent didn’t know the bills would shrink the “doughnut hole” in Medicare drug benefits.

In all, nine of the 21 listed proposals scored higher than 50 percent in the “didn’t know” category. Other scores were surprisingly high: For example, 39 percent didn’t know the bills would prohibit insurance companies from charging higher premiums based on a person’s existing condition or medical history.

A Pew Research Center poll, also released last month, found six in 10 Americans didn’t know that people with existing medical conditions would have an easier time getting coverage under the proposals in Congress. Among self-identified opponents of the bill, seven in 10 didn’t know. And only 15 percent of all respondents knew that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects that, if passed, the bills will decrease the federal deficit (by $100 billion) over the next 10 years.

It makes me wonder, what do people believe are in the bills?