Yahoo! News Tries To Shut Down The Health Care Debate

With more people perusing their Yahoo! News headlines than pondering the editorial pages of the New York Times, the internet giant's brand of quick-hit liberal bias deserves continued scrutiny.  Yesterday was bad, this is worse:

Better get with the flow, people.  Only outcasts, wingnuts and Tea Party types want to re-fight this battle....right?

But if  you should read the article (which Yahoo! assumes you won't), your head will spin:

In the latest survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 56 percent of respondents said they prefer Obamacare opponents "stop their efforts to block the law and move on to other national problems," while 38 percent said they prefer those opponents "continue trying to block the law from being implemented."

So that's where the headline of the piece is originating.  But the bulk of the article actually repudiates the long-term validity of the poll:

While the health law remains unpopular, Kaiser found a bump in support for it after the Supreme Court's decision. In Kaiser's polling, the respondents were, 41 percent to 41 percent, on whether they support or oppose the law...

A Reuters/Ipsos poll released today corroborated that bump, with opposition slipping from 57 percent to 52 percent and support increasing from 43 percent to 48 percent. The health law saw a similar bump when it passed Congress in March 2010.

The law was unpopular before Congress passed it and Obama signed it, but Gallup showed a brief moment in which poll respondents favored the law immediately after its victory. A week later, it was unpopular again...


So more likely than not, this is a dead cat bounce.  Most news organizations would hesitate running with this type of poll, or would at least add a qualifier into the headline, something like "Poll: Obamacare gains support, but for how long?"

Unless, of course, you had an ideological axe to grind...


(more of my beefs with Yahoo's slanted news service here, here,  here,  here and here, and here...)