POLLSTER FINDS: Columbia residents don't like Obamacare

COLUMBIA, 9/20/10  (Beat Byte) --  Twin sets of "man-on-the-street interviews" indicate that Columbia residents don't much like the 1,990 page Federal health care reform law aka "ObamaCare."

 

The finding "corroborates anecdotally what the polls are finding scientifically," interviewer Trudy Lieberman writes in the

well-regarded  Columbia Journalism Review.  "People don't see how it will help them, and have a bad feeling about what will happen to their benefits," she notes.   

 

Hannah Spratt, a University of Missouri English major, told Lieberman she knew Obamacare would require everyone to have health insurance.  "It's a good and bad thing.  I don't like the fact people will be forced to buy insurance," she said.

Charles Paxton, the superintendent of landscape services at the University, said his parents, in their late seventies, "are scared -- really scared -- about what the bill would do.  They are somewhat afraid of the rationing part of it," he explained. "They listen to Fox News way too many hours.  But they probably should be worried."

 

Two findings surprised Lieberman.  "Many I interviewed, even if they didn't support [Obamacare], did not vote for the state to opt out of it," she writes.  And "many I visited with in Missouri had never heard of the law, much less knew anything about what it did or how it affected them."   

 

Among her interviewees, Lieberman found people working multiple jobs just to keep up.  On her way out of the St. Louis airport, Lieberman interviewed Elonna Paraham, who gets up at three in the morning to drive from her home in Bellville, Illinois, works at the airport from 5 am to 12:30 and then heads to her second job, at Busch Stadium.  Her two jobs bring in about $2,200 a month after taxes.

 

"It's no wonder she knew nothing about health reform," Lieberman wrote.