Health and Human Services

Two items from Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com:

1. Setting aside the issue that we've noted elsewhere that voters think they oppose the health care bill, but actually support its provisions, Silver notes that Pollster.com's summary of numerous polls on the popularity of the health care bill shows that public support now is virtually unchanged from what it was when the measure passed the House
2. This from February that shows that both times Congress approved a health care bill (House and Senate), Democrats got a bounce in the polls from their own party voters "without suffering any further harm from Republicans and independents."

The January Kaiser Health Tracking poll finds that a majority of the public still supports the idea that "it is more important than ever to take on health reform now." The poll further finds that while Americans are divided over Congressional health care proposals, even skeptics grow more supportive when they learn specific details of the proposals, such as:

• Tax credits for small businesses
• Health insurance exchanges
• Insurers prevented from denying coverage on pre-existing conditions

http://kff.org/kaiserpolls/8042.cfm

From the New York Times:

Handing President Obama a hard-fought victory, the House narrowly approved a sweeping overhaul of the nation’s health care system on Saturday night, advancing legislation that Democrats said could stand as their defining social policy achievement.

After a daylong clash with Republicans over what has been a Democratic goal for decades, lawmakers voted 220 to 215 to approve a plan that would cost $1.1 trillion over 10 years. Democrats said the legislation would provide overdue relief to Americans struggling to buy or hold on to health insurance.

"This is our moment to revolutionize health care in this country,”" said Representative George Miller, Democrat of California and one of the chief architects of the bill.