For the GOP, that is. The general assumption is that passage of the bill will significantly help the Republicans by delivering a new benefit to seniors, burnishing Bush’s compassionate conservative credentials and taking a key Democratic issue off the table.

And that would be true if another, better Medicare bill had passed. It is not true of the actual bill that passed.

Take the views of seniors, surely where the payoff for the GOP should be most obvious, if there is a payoff. According to a poll last week by Peter Hart Research for the AFL-CIO, almost two-thirds of voters 55 and older thought Congress and the White House should work for a better Medicare prescription drug plan than the one on offer. Just 19 percent wanted Congress to pass the bill under consideration.

The same poll found that 65 percent of these voters viewed the drug plan unfavorably and the same number viewed the subsidies for private HMOs unfavorably. Also, 64 percent opposed the bill’s provisions to ban importation of drugs from Canada and an overwhelming 78 percent said the bill doesn’t do enough to protect retirees now covered by employer-provided prescription drug plans.

Oh, but that’s just an AFL-CIO poll, right? What can you expect from them? Perhaps it wasn’t a good (fair and balanced?) poll, etc.

That complaint would have more credence if we didn’t have even more recent results from the University of Pennsylvania National Annenberg Election Survey. This survey found that, based on a carefully neutral description of the bill (see link), the public as a whole opposed the bill 42 percent to 40 percent, registered voters opposed it 44 percent to 39 percent, those over 50 opposed the bill 49 percent to 36 percent and those over 65 opposed it 49 percent to 33 percent. And, interestingly, those holding a favorable opinion of AARP, which of course endorsed the bill, opposed its passage 45 percent to 38 percent.

So, it’s not a particularly popular bill, especially with those it’s intended to directly benefit. And the Democrats are going to relentlessly dwell on the shortcomings of the bill, from failure to control drug costs to moving away from a choice-of-doctor-based Medicare system to the skimpiness of the benefit and its impact on those who already have good drug coverage. By these data, seniors are already inclined to believe much of what Democrats are going to be saying.

That likely spells trouble for the GOP. Just saying it’s better than nothing won’t help them much, in DR’s view. Nor will the fact that seniors won’t actually receive the benefit until 2006–and so, runs the argument, they won’t realize how bad it is until after 2004.

How dumb do they think seniors are? DR’s betting they’ll figure this one out pretty quick–and when they do, they’ll come to the obvious conclusion: if you want health care done right, hire a Democrat.