By Jeremy Herb

Do Americans support health reform? Depends how you ask. A Fox News story today—headlined "Opposition to Health Care Reform Holds Steady"—said Americans oppose reforms proposed by the Senate 54 percent to 35 percent. A CBS poll last week, however, said the public supported a public option by a 2-to-1 margin, 62 percent to 31 percent. Why the disparity? The answers you get depend on the questions you ask.

The CBS poll asked about government-run health care this way: "Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health-insurance plan—something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get—that would compete with private health-insurance plans?" Compare that to the Fox News poll, which focused its question on the legislation in Congress: "Based on what you know about the health-care reform legislation being considered right now, do you favor or oppose the plan?"

The way that both news organizations posed their questions are problematic. CBS compared the public option directly to Medicare, leaving respondents with the idea, conscious or unconscious, that a government-run plan would be like Medicare, something favored in the public eye. (It's not yet clear if or how closely a public plan would track Medicare.) Fox, on the other hand, asked its respondents to take what they know about health-reform legislation and decide if they favor "the plan." Of course, there are five plans in Congress right now, and most people are confused by the legislation that's proposed. And by tying health reform to Congress, it's tied to an organization with pitiful approval ratings.

In general, health-reform poll numbers tend to be unreliable. But when surveys don't ask simple questions, they are asking for skewed responses. These kinds of poll questions are like the discredited report this week from America's Health Insurance Plans, which took certain elements of the Baucus bill to incorrectly claim premiums would rise—they only make the public more skeptical and cynical. We are much more interested in knowing whether Americans support a public option in concept, which is much different question from whether they approve of something that's like Medicare (even if this turns out to be true) or whether they've be reading H.R. 3200.