This entry reminds us of the demands at some Tea Party events to “get the government off my Medicare!”” The complainants had to be reminded that Medicare is the government.

It seems that the ignorance quotient is rising with the expansion of the Internet.

Thus a Kaiser Health Tracking Poll suggests that many in the public, increasingly ill-informed about public policy, may not really know what they are talking about when it comes to key healthcare issues.

As summarized by Becker’s Hospital Review, the poll showed:

“The greatest proportion of Americans (36 percent) supports building on the Affordable Care Act, rather than implementing a single-payer plan (24 percent) repealing and not replacing it (16 percent) or repealing it and replacing it with a Republican alternative (13 percent), according the poll. However, the poll also indicated the words used to describe these plans can significantly change how they are viewed — harkening back to the Jimmy Kimmel bit on Obamacare versus the ACA.

“In particular the views of Democratic candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders’s (I-Vt.) plan were misunderstood. The survey found 64 percent of Americans positively react to ‘Medicare for All,’ Sen. Sanders’s universal healthcare plan, and 57 percent positively react to ‘guaranteed universal healthcare coverage.’ However, when asked about ‘single-payer health insurance system,’ 44 percent reacted positively, according to the report. Even among Democrats, there was confusion. About half (53 percent) supported Medicare for All, while only 21 percent positively reacted to ‘single-payer,’  though the terms refer to the same thing.

“When it is clearly broken down for participants as ‘guaranteed health insurance coverage in which all Americans would get their insurance through a single government health plan,’ roughly half are in favor and 43 percent are against it, according to the report.”