Correction: This poll was conducted by USA Today as well as Gallup. We regret the omission.

The cliche used about Congressional legislation in progress is that it looks a lot like making sausage—not pretty. But in the end, you get the sausage, which is not on our diets any more but never mind. We got something.

This health care reform legislation process is so far beyond sausage, any effort to find a parallel fails.  We did, however, end up with health care reform.

However, once the bill passed Sunday, in rapid order there have been news stories about how the bill will roll out—what hits when, why and who’s affected. Those stories may be beginning to bring some order out of the chaos.

This is the first poll to show that that may be happening.

Too soon to know for sure, of course. All the other polls have been unfavorable up to now.

Atlantic Online

“An early verdict is in, from USA Today/Gallup: poll respondents said they support the passage of health care reform by the House of Representatives, by a margin of 49% to 40%.”

…”This stands in contrast to most national polling on health care, which shows Americans opposed to the health care plans being discussed in Washington, with pollsters phrasing that plan differently. Right now, Pollster.com’s average shows 50.5% opposed and 41.5% in favor–and that’s mostly in line with what polls have shown, on average, for the past few months leading up to this vote.

“But polls have also shown that respondents wanted action, of some sort, on health care, even if they didn’t like the Democrats’ bills. 69% told CNN/Opinion Research Corp. in January that health care is an extremely or very important issue.”

Source: Atlantic Online, March 23, 2010