Has Opinion on Health Care Shifted?

For months leading up to the passage of health care, the pollster.com average found a net plurality of around 5-12 percentage points disapproved of the plan.  The first poll taken after passage, however, found the public in favor of the plan by a 49-40 margin.  Was that just an outlier, or has opinion actually shifted?

There have been five polls polls taken after passage of the bill.  Here's how they stack up:

	Favor	Oppose	Net
WaPo	46	50	-4
CBS	42	46	-4
Quinnipiac	40	49	-9
USA Today-Gallup	49	40	9
YouGov	50	50	0
average	45.4	47	-1.6

Across these five polls, a plurality still disapprove of health care -- but only a very slight one.  Let's compare them to the last five polls released before passage:

	Favor	Oppose	Net
Bloomberg	38	50	-12
CNN	39	59	-20
CBS	37	48	-11
Quinnipiac	36	54	-18
Rasmussen	41	54	-13
average	38.2	53	-14.8

The last five polls were among the most negative of the past year.  Whether this is due to the build-up before passage or simply the five that happened to be last, I can't quite say.  Comparing these 10, we see a 13 point swing in net approval of the health care bill.  But this might not be the right comparison groups.  Given the different questions and samples of the polls, it might be better to compare polls taken by the same organization before and after.  There have been three of these:

	After			Before
	Favor	Oppose	Net	Favor	Oppose	Net
CBS	42	46	-4	37	48	-11
Quinnipiac	40	49	-9	36	54	-18
YouGov	50	50	0	48	53	-5
average	44	48.33	-4.33	40.33	51.67	-11.33

Looking at only these three, we find a 7 point swing in net approval -- and we still see a small plurality (though not majority) opposed to the bill.

The trend could be just a blip, could be based on a few faulty polls, or could be a genuine shift in how Americans view the health care bill (or at least how they report they feel).  If the first two are true, new polls will pretty quickly bear this out.  But there are two fairly good reasons to believe that the last one is, in fact, happening:

1.) The initial results were misleading.  Take the these results from a Bloomberg poll taken right before the vote in which 38% favored the bill and 50% were opposed

Health care is so complicated it is hard for the average American to understand the proposals that are currently being discussed
75% Agree, 23% Disagree

The cost of doing nothing on health care will be greater than the cost of the proposed plan to overhaul it
51% Agree, 40% Disagree

The health care system is fine the way it is
20% Agree, 79% Disagree

In short, people don't know much about the health care bill but they want to do something to fix the broken health care system.

2.) As 538 points out, a small but meaningful number of people opposed the bill b/c it wasn't liberal enough.  The approval numbers among Independents and Republicans in the new USA Today/Gallup poll is roughly similar to other previous polls, but the approval numbers among Democrats are much higher.

In the last poll before the bill passed (and outlier in terms of negativity toward the bill), conducted by CNN, 59% reported that they were opposed to the bill -- but 13% reported opposing the bill b/c it wasn't liberal enough.  In other words, 52% of the population either favored the bill or thought it wasn't liberal enough while 43% opposed the bill b/c it was too liberal.

The Pirates' Turnaround: Where's the Proof?

After a multi-part fire sale and two consecutive years of record draft expenditures, the Pirates' brass claims to have transformed the system so that the team can now build from within.  But where's the evidence of this?

In a 30 team league, only two Pirates ranked among the top 100 prospects, their fewest since 2005, (all-time list of Pirates who have ranked among BA's top 100 ) -- only two organizations had fewer this year.  Even worse, it appears that only four would rank among the top 200 or so . . . and three of these four are slated to make their major league debuts this year.

So even if those three pan out, where does this leave the team next year and down the road?  Will lower rated players and new draft picks shine this summer and move up the ranks?  While that might have seemed like a legitimate hope five years ago, it hasn't happened much recently.

When we look at the past couple years, that possibility looks less likely than one might imagine.  Of last year's top 10 prospects, one (McCutchen) moved up to the bigs, three maintained their positions (Alvarez, Tabata, and Lincoln), and the other 6 dropped out of the top 10.  If we go back another year to the 2008 top 10, we see that only two (McCutchen and Lincoln) made the bigs or remain top prospects.  So even if we assume that the top four will pan out, the past few years don't lend much evidence that numbers 5-10 will move up the ranks.

Indeed, if we go back further and examine the Pirates' top ten prospects over the past 7 years we see that only one player (Steve Pearce, #8-2006/#3-2007) has moved from the bottom half to the top half of the list in the past 5.  As the table below shows, 17 of the 18 prospects ranked 5-10 dropped off the list the following year (1, Pearce, moved up to the majors) between 2007 and 2010.  Between 2004 and 2007, however, only 4 dropped off the list the following year while 7 remained on the list and 8 moved up to the majors.

Pirates Prospects #5-10 the following year

years	steady	up	down	majors	dropped
2009-10	0	0	0	0	6
2008-09	0	0	0	0	6
2007-08	0	1	0	0	5
2006-07	0	0	0	6	0
2005-06	0	3	1	1	1
2004-05	0	2	0	1	3

As you might notice from the tables I linked to, all of the prospects who topped out in the bottom five and went on to become impact major leaguers -- Nate McLouth (#6, 2006), Matt Capps (#10, 2006), Freddy Sanchez (#7, 2004), and Ryan Doumit (#10, 2004) -- were from the earlier time period.  Daniel McCutchen is the only name that stands out from 2007-09 who could potentially be added to that list.  And maybe it's just my imagination, but it seems that the lists have recently been dominated by first-round draft picks and outside acquisitions while in the past there were more later round draft picks (e.g. Zach Duke, Nate McLouth, Ian Snell) who ascended up the list.

Of course, maybe this year will be different.  After all, in addition to standouts Alvarez and Sanchez, they have five former top 100 prospects (Jose Tabata, Gorkys Hernandez, Brad Lincoln, Neil Walker, and Tim Alderson) in their system along with a number of later-round selections from the past couple years who signed for over-slot bonuses.  Maybe the new management team's draft and development brilliance will begin to shine through this year (and, given the discussion above, it might be imperative that it does).  But such an occurrence would stand in stark contrast to recent trends.

I suppose the best measure may come when Baseball America ranks farm systems again -- the Pirates ranked 18th last year.  Though, given the context, I'd argue that next year's rating might be far more important.

As a Pirates fan, I very much want to believe that new management has transformed the minor league system.  But I see very little objective evidence that it has.