Quote Machine: Wasserman Schultz Catching Flak for Renaming Public Option

By Thomas Francis Thu., Oct. 29 2009 at 9:53 AM

Categories: Health, Politics

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Wasserman Schultz

Does "consumer option" sound more inviting than "public option"? How about "competitive option"? In case it does, Fox News is warning its partisan audience that whatever West Broward Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Nancy Pelosi call it, it's still a "public option" -- which still translates to the dreaded "big government."

Normally, efforts to re-brand public policy, deserve the eye rolls they get. But then you look at polls like this one, which suggest that roughly a quarter of the population has a knee-jerk opposition to policies that sound public option-y but who will reverse that opposition if the same plan is described as giving them a "choice" between a government health care plan and a private one. It's roughly the difference between a plan that only half of Americans support and one that three-quarters of Americans' support.

So if it boils down to semantics, and if -- as those polls attest -- opponents of the public option don't understand the public option, why not try re-packaging it?

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