Most Frequently Used Words When Americans Talk About Healthcare Reform

Here's a word graph that displays the prevalence of the actual words used by Americans when they are asked to discuss their support or opposition to President Obama’s healthcare plan. We removed the words “healthcare” and “think” from the graph since they were very frequently used, but not particularly meaningful.

Note that three of the most prevalent words used by Americans in discussing Obama's plan are “government” and “cost” and “insurance.” This underscores the pivotal role of these concepts in the healthcare reform debate. Clearly advocates of healthcare reform evoke the need for insurance on the part of those now uninsured. Cost is used by those on both sides of the issue. Those in favor of healthcare reform are most likely to talk about the cost of access to healthcare. Those opposed to healthcare reform are most likely to talk about the big picture cost of healthcare per se.

Quite a few people also use cost-related words such as "money" and "expensive."

Evocations of the government are primarily used by those who oppose healthcare reform.

Note that "abortion" shows up, but it's by no means highly prevalent.

Again, the full review of the coded categories of responses to the healthcare legislation question are included in my colleague Jeff Jones' analysis.