Recent polls have found Obamacare to be at unprecedented levels of popularity while Republican efforts to replace it are very unpopular. My own interpretation of those polls: People don’t dislike the Republican plans because they favor Obamacare; they favor Obamacare because they dislike the Republican plans. The public’s dominant sentiment on health care is usually: Please, Washington, don’t do anything more to screw it up, especially if it could affect me.

In Slate, Danielle Ofri concludes from the Republicans’ problems that the public is ready for single payer. If I’m right about the centrality of public fear of Washington-imposed disruption in existing health-insurance arrangements, though, it’s bad news for single-payer enthusiasts too.

Polling on single payer has been mixed. In January, an AP-NORC poll found that 38 percent of Americans favor and 39 percent oppose “a single payer health care system, in which all Americans would get their health insurance from one government plan.” If the system would involve a large increase in government spending—which it almost certainly would—the numbers shift to 47 percent opposition and 24 percent support. (The 47 percent number is my history-major math applied to the information provided at the link.)

Some pollster should ask about single payer while making it explicit that it involves replacing everyone’s existing insurance plan with a government-provided one