issue. you are watching "washington journal." our next guest will be peter brown from when a pack university. there is a new poll out on health care -- when a packed at 9:00 a.m. eastern time, lawrence yun from the national association of realtors. .

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>> publicly funded. >> donations maybe? i have no idea. >> government? >> c-span gets its funding through the taxes. >> federal funding? >> public funding thing. >> 30 years ago america's cable companies created c-span as a public service. a private business initiative. no government mandate. no government money. >> "washington journal" continues. host: healthcare now and with us is peter brown assistant director of the polling institute at quinnipiac university. new poll out today. we will cover the event later. how many people did you talk to about healthcare and what were you looking for? guest: over 3,000. the polls are different because the national poll is very large. we shoot for and usually get a little over 3,000 interviews, which is about 2 1/2 times the

normal national sample. so we are very confident about the results. what we found was that there is a real disconnect based on the data in how the country sees healthcare reform. they support the idea in general but i don't think they are aware of how much it will cost. and they seem reluctant to pay much more in taxes than they currently are. host: did that surprise you? guest: a little bit. given that congress is talking about a program between $1.1 trillion and $1.5 trillion, and our survey found that almost half the voters don't want to pay anything more in taxs es to fans it and of the half that were willing to pay for, half of them are only willing to pay $500 more a year. there seems to be a disconnect. host: let's get into some of the

numbers with peter brown from the poll done by quinnipiac university. first off, 69% support government run insurance. guest: they support -- what we asked is whether they thought there should be a government run insurance option and 69% think yes. but 28%, which is to be dofrd by it. i think what that reflects is a view that americans want as many options as possible. but they are skeptical about the notion of a government run plan. the charges of some of president barack obama's opponents that he will try to turn america into great britain in terms of medical care has had some effect. americans are skeptical of what they know about single payer healthcare in europe. host: let me ask you to explain the other two numbers on the graphic. 52% say others do not get good value from healthcare.

guest: what that means is people actually are much more optimistic about their own situation than they are overall. if you ask people to rate the local public schools and then in the state and country the rating for the local school is higher based on their own experience, which is true with healthcare. so it is on the economy. rate their own financial situation and national economy there is a wide dichotomy and their situation is better. host: we see polls like that about members of congress an congress itself. guest: so that is not hugely surprising. host: calls for our guest. we welcome you to phone in. peter brown will be with us 25 more minutes.

call the numbers on the screen. more of the information from the poll before we get to calls. according to the poll 15% would pay more taxes to increase health coverage and lower costs. 45% do not want to pay additional tax. do you have a general sense of how they expect this to get paid for? guest: we asked questions about various proposals and what is clear is they are happy to have a health care reform package paid for by higher taxes on business and tabses on the wealthy. but when they talk about taxes on people that make less than $250,0 $250,000, they are much more resistant to the idea. host: decatur, alabama, on the line. caller: the word is out

yesterday that since the first of the year the insurance folks are spending $1 million a day to keep us from getting healthcare. i think from now on when anyone gets on your program or tv they should all be asked how much money they are getting from insuran insurance. guest: we take no money from anybody for the polls. it is self-funded by the university. so in answer to that concern we are getting nothing. host: do you want to respond, caller? caller: i'm not speaking to you. i'm talking about the senators and stuff that they are buying up this at $106,000 apiece. we've got to come out with what is holding up on the healthcare. i thank you. host: anything else? saint talk steen, florida. jill on the independent line. caller: great. you could almost bet right now

rasmuss rasmussen will put together a poll that will dispute your poll entirely and it would only be run on fox news because everybody else knows the polling is so dishonest. it has been proven. when they have obama as a 35% approval rating right now. but meantime, you say this is going to come out in the newspapers tomorrow or what? guest: yes, sir. in fact, any of your viewers who want to look at the poll itself, go to quinnipiac.edu and follow the prompts to the polling institute. across the top it says institute and centers. click on that and the polling institute. all of our polls are available online including this one in great details. this is a 15-passenger repoge r. host: you also wrote in the

"wall street journal" today. guest: i write a weekly column online and this on this poll. the point i tried to make in the column is that there really is a giant disconnect on healthcare. vast, vast majorities of americans want better healthcare. and healthcare reform. the question of what constitutes healthcare reform is really in the eye of the beholder. a majority think it means lowering their cost of healthcare. a substantial number of people but a minority think that healthcare reform means covering the 45 million americans who don't currently have coverage. so, that it means different things to different policeman. that is one reason the results when you ask various questions may seem a dichotomy. host: peter brown will be at an event releasing the poll which we will have live on c-span 2, 10:00 eastern.

president obama is having a town hall on healthcare live on c-span at 1:15 p.m. eastern time. shelby township, michigan. len on the republican line. caller: my question to the guest is that in your polling did you ask the question that is if there is the illegal alien situation in this country, are they under this healthcare plan that obama is trying to roll out? guest: we did not ask how americans felt about the inclusion of undocumented aliens in this country. frankly, it is not yet appearing to be clear what the approach will be from congress and the president on that issue. when it is, we will probably poll on it. but we don't think we should set the agenda. we react to what the government and politicians do and ask people what they this. host: bergen county, new jersey.

democratic caller mitchell. caller: good morning. mr. brown, we know in polling that the way the question is asked often reflects the way a person will respond to it. in your question about would people support higher taxes you indicated that you got a negative response. now, if you ask the question on that such as would you support higher taxes and people say no, that would be different as to would you support higher taxes even if your overall health bill were to decline? how did you ask the question? guest: first, actually a bear plurality said they would pay minister taxes of 49% said they would. 45% say no. the question is as follows. would you be willing or unwilling to pay more in taxes for a health care overall plan that reduces healthcare costs and covers those who don't have health insurance? host: caller?

caller: well, i mean, all right. i understand you are trying to make that a neutral question. but i guess i would have asked the question, would you support higher taxes if it your overall healthcare cost was lower? it is basically saying that reduced costs and i would assume if i were answering that question that those reduced costs might not be applicable to me. i'm not saying that that is a biased question. i can't say that it is from the way you asked it. but a lot of people who are against healthcare reform are going to use that statistic from your poll and try to turn it against the movement. that would be my comment. host: anything you want to add? guest: no. host: more from the poll here at quinnipiac. 51% do not support requiring all people to have health insurance.

host: 53% feel it is responsible for providing healthcare. guest: they show they are not big numbers. in most cases they are a bear majority or slight majority. which reflects two things. one there is division in the country. everybody wants better healthcare but going back to what i said earlier, people's definition of what better healthcare is varies. so, what you are seeing is on all the questions the majority is in the 50's. there is no huge swelling of public opinion on any one thing because there's a split. part of it is that it is tough for the average person to get their hand around this. tough for a pollster or a broadcast er. because it changes and much of the negotiation is behind closed doors. host: how do you do the poll? how do you communicate with the 3,000 people?

guest: there are random digit dial telephones and we have a calling bank on campus and we have callers, students and people from the community who work for us. there is a set script that they have and the computer dials the number for them. it is a random sample of telephone numbers across the country. host: portsmouth, virginia, robert on the independent line. caller: thank you. first i would like to say about the polls. i feel all polls in general are not giving the people at the bottom that have problems with computers, their opinion is not being registered and it would be all negative as far as anybody trying to stop healthcare for all citizens. secondly, after all the money that has been blown in the last eight years, i don't want to hear there ain't enough money to

get from wherever. take the top 2% richest people and make them start over. whatever you have got to do. thirdly, the ultimate physician, jesus christ, told people to get in line. anybody that doesn't want their fellow man, much less fellow citizen, not to get the full benefits of all the medical care in this country, you are saying to jesus christ you can't -- you ask yourself would i tell jesus christ not to get this medicine? jesus said in the past that we were told to love thy neighbor as you love thyself. guest: i want to be clear. our poll is a telephone poll. you -- the responses don't have to have to have any computer knowledge and it is a random

sample of telephones. host: toledo, ohio. garrett on the republican line. toledo, are you there? caller: yes. host: please turn the sound down on your set and we will hear you better. caller: ok. hold on. sorry about that. host: go ahead, sir. caller: i disagree with how the last person was talking about a jesus christ because it is just basically not all based on jesus because there are other religions in america, and basically what the michigan guy said earlier about illegal aliens, illegal aliens are a big problem in the united states, yes. but they all have huge penises.

host: let's get rid of that call. now rio rancho, new mexico. caller: thank you for taking my call. i want to remind everyone that the biggest issue that the candidates ran on during the presidential campaign was universal healthcare. single payer coverage is what the majority of americans want. you can query your question such as you get different percentages to agree, but the majority of the americans voted a democrat president in who ran on universal coverage. we need to get single payer coverage back on the agenda. it is imperative. guest: my memory of the campaign is president obama ran on providing healthcare to almost all americans.

as you may remember, he had a dispute with senator clinton about whether his plan would cover everybody or almost everybody. but he was not very specific about the notion of single payer. clearly he won and there is a lot of support in the democratic party for it. but it is not clear to me that he ran as a candidate proposing single payer healthcare. he ran proposing healthcare for virtually all americans. host: what else did you can we didn't talk about? guest: no, it is exclusively health care. we do one poll a month on one big topic. we have done them on gay rights, affirmative action. healthcare was the topic. host: what else did you talk to people about on the healthcare issue guest: one thing away asked people is how they felt about the notion of balancing various characteristics. we asked questions like, if healthcare reform meant lower

cost and covering everybody but limited your choices in what kind of care and how would you feel and there were opinions all over the map. there are varied opinions about what healthcare reform means. everybody is for healthcare reform but the specifics, you know, do you raise taxes on the upper income people to do it? do you force people to buy coverage whether they want to buy it or not? americans don't like the idea of taxing healthcare benefits because that is a tax that will hit squarely on the mill class. host: have you polled on healthcare before and are there differences between now and then? guest: not to this extent and the healthcare questions in the past were in a different environment. host: let's hear from springfield, missouri, carl, in-line. you are on with peter brown of quinnipiac. caller: hi, there. i must say i have various

graduate degrees and i'm very familiar with insurance and how insurance operates. i think it would be very difficult to put together in a poll, unless you clf people, you know, by the type of insurance they have now. if you get a government worker, whether they work for the state or federal government, they are going to be satisfied. if you get a retired person from a major corporation, they are going to be satisfied. but it is all of the small businesses throughout the united states that really have to -- they don't have the rating pool in order to qualify for lower rat rates. take a business that has 25, 50 or 100 people. through any group sponsored plan they will pay a lot more than someone who is like state farm

insurance company or allstate insurance company that effectively writes their own policies. so, i personally -- i'm not saying your poll was incorrect. i'm just saying personally that i don't put much stock in it because plans are so different. all major corporations, their plans are sponsored plans. they have their h.m.o.'s. they control what doctors you go to unless a doctor participates in the plan. if you are in a major city you get a list of where you can go. if you are in southwest missouri, for example, i happen to be a retiree and you can go to any doctor you want to. but my principal point on the insurance is this. health insurance is really fragmented throughout every

state in the united states, and doctors operate differently. they have their own forms. networks like st. john's network or cox network, the doctors affiliated with those hospital associations, they have different forms. going back to about 25 years, the company i worked for was a major international insurance company. i priced and we purchased another multi- liline insurance company in the united states, and what we were willing to pay for it this company had grown up, that we were buying, was what i would call a hodgepodge. they had grown and become national by buying a lot of insurance companies. host: caller, go ahead and finish up your point.

caller: to finish my point, in coming up with what we taught was a fair value, what i said was that when we buy this company we will have to spend $150 million to consolidate everything, make all of the systems uniform, procedures uniform. host: appreciate your thoughts. anything there that you would like to respond to? guest: no, it is not about our poll. host: will you do other polling on healthcare? guest: perhaps. we pick one topic a month and look at it in depth. it depends on what is going on. we timed our poll on affirmative action for the new haven firefighters case. so, our next one will look at what is going on and make a decision shortly before we poll. host: nashville, tennessee. mary, republican callerment caller: 3,000 people are not really a lot but i think a majority do not want, do not

trust our government and do not want us in the healthcare business, which isn't their job to begin w. government funded healthcare, first of all, that is what, $100 or more per person to pay for somebody else? and there is no guarantee you can keep your old plan and they are really trying to make it -- i don't trust what the president says about that. also, i would rather have a job than pay for somebody else's healthcare. i like what i have now. also, about keeping our government out of it, they are going to be -- if this goes through, they would decide -- it is the government that would make the decision whether you are eligible for a heart transplant or not. this is ridiculous. people don't understand what this is going to do. our founding fathers fought against this happening. go free market. keep it out of the government.

host: do you have a sense of -- go ahead. guest: the one thing that is true that -- i was getting into the caller's comments but she said that vast majority of americans are happy with their healthcare, three out of four. host: any demographic differences between younger folks and older folks? guest: generally people the lower your income the more you are likely to support government healthcare. that is not surprising. the higher income more likely you are to worry about taxation. host: byrd, louisiana. democratic line, jane. caller: thank you. i'm just worried with so many questions. first of all, i have medicare and i have a supplemental with united healthcare. medicare pays very little to the doctor. i went to the doctor and it was

$ $77. the fee for a colonoscopy was $900 and they reimbursed $a hundred and something. doctors will not take it. and my supplemental is with united healthcare but the retiring c.e.o. of united healthcare got $1.2 billion and they found troubling paperwork. so he was only able to get $800 million as a retiring pension. host: any specific reaction to the poll numbers? 69% support government run insurance. 28% of people would choose to be covered by it. anything that you are have heard about what americans think in caller: i think that they really have to take the profit out of healthcare to recover. one more thing, my daughter has blue cross/blue shield. she pays $900 a month for a family policy and she took her 4-year-old twins to the doctor. the visit was $250 if you went

by the insurance. $250 to check that kids' ears. but if she paid cash it was $130. host: now the independent line from tennessee. ben. what would you like to say about the poll? caller: i think we should stay with what we got or go with what the senators and president and all them has got, kobe virginia because the fees are over $1,000 if you are on disability social security and you draw over $1,000 you are going to have to pay $100 a month for insurance plus 20% of your medicine and 20% on the doctor call every time you go to the doctor. i just think we would be better off with what we got and leave the government completely out of it. host: let's hear if peter brown

has anything to say? guest: obviously there is a strong sentiment, whether a majority or not, to keep the government out of healthcare. and the question is the government is in healthcare. the question is how much more should it get involved. that is really the folks on capitol hill and at the white house are trying to decide and trying to figure out whether there is public support for. again, everybody is for healthcare but everybody has different definitions. host: how emotional are people about this? guest: it is hard to know from a poll but from your callers this matters to people. it is not an abstract concept to them. it is their life and their finances and their health. so it is something people get interested about. host: last call, scott republican line from lake park, georgia. caller: good morning, gentlemen. the first thing real quick i don't really understand. a lot of people on here seem to think when they go to a doctor with insurance that somehow they

charge you more. that has never been my experience. and people without insurance pay a lot more than people with insurance. i'm not just talking -- i'm talking total bill. nottous their portion that they pay. doctors charge people without insurance more, which i don't understand. but here is the question. people keep saying government run healthcare. are we really looking -- who is running healthcare now? i guess that is the question . the insurance companies, for a profit? i don't see how government run could be any worse than for-profit insurance companies because they certainly are in it for a business. host: peter brown, what else should we take from the poll? guest: what you should take from the poll is the notion that the american people are very interested in this topic and have general support for the notion of better healthcare, better healthcare value but on specifics they are all over the place. host: we will cover thent