The early cut and thrust in the Obama administration’s push for public health care — or “social­ized med­i­cine”, as they adorably call it down there — has so far been pretty dis­cour­aging. Even the demo­c­ratic con­gress is lining up to show how thoughtful they are by opposing what would admit­tedly be pretty rad­ical change in the con­text of the U.S.A. But it appears that one of the fun­da­mental per­ceived wis­doms that back up America’s idio­syn­cratic retro cling to pri­vate health care may no longer be true: U.S. cit­i­zens have lost their terror of pub­li­cizing health.

“But the Times/CBS poll found 85 per­cent of respon­dents wanted major health­care reforms and most would be willing to pay higher taxes to ensure everyone had health insurance.”

Poll finds wide sup­port for health­care changes — Reuters

Why, hello com­rade! I know that “major reforms” isn’t nec­es­sarily the same thing as public health care, but surely that’s what we’re talking about, right? Right? Furthermore, polls are dubious crea­tures as a species, and I’m afraid to pay too much atten­tion to this one, but lord, 85 is a big number. Maybe the next time I work down there I won’t be paying a sub­stan­tial por­tion of what would be my rent money to a dodgy insur­ance cor­po­ra­tion, and get­ting a creepy wal­mart vibe every time I work up the finan­cial nerve to go to my doctor’s office.

Update June 22^nd: And this.