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That Republicans don’t support health care reform.

Opponents of health care reform have been touting the results of yesterday’s primary in Missouri as if it were a national referendum on “the will of the people.” After all, more than 70 percent of voters who came out for the primary cast ballots in favor of Proposition C, a  measure that would allow state residents to opt out of mandatory health insurance.

What most reports on the primary don’t mention is that the majority of the primary voters were Republicans.  According to unofficial results compiled by the Associated Press, 577,612 ballots were cast in the GOP Senate primary, compared to 315,787 cast in the Democratic Senate primary on Proposition C

Because the Republican primary was hotly contested, GOP voters came out in force. So now we know what have known for months: Republicans are opposed to health care reform.  Many just don’t see universal coverage as a top priority, some are worried that it will cost too much, and others just want to “break Obama.”

According to the latest Gallup poll only 17% of Republicans called reform “a good thing” while 79% saw it as “a bad thing.”Among Democrats, 76% favored reform, while 18% gave it the thumbs down. Meanwhile 43% of Independents gave the legislation the Martha Stewart “good thing” seal of approval while just 51% disapproved.

A more recent Kaiser   poll released late in July showed a similar trend: 69% of Republicans opposed  reform while 48% of independents said they favored the law.  Overall, when responses from voters of all political persuasions were combined, 50% supported reform while opposition had fallen to 35%.

"It's essentially meaningless – there was a hotly contested Republican primary, and those voters were the ones voting on this. Also, it has no legal significance – and Democrats didn't pay any attention to it or even run a campaign against it because of it," a Democratic source tells CNN

Read More: http://www.healthbeatblog.com/2010/08/what-does-the-missouri-vote-on-the-individual-mandate-tell-us.html