Americans are still sharply divided over President Barack Obama’s vision of healthcare overhaul, but they’re starting to come around  — again –  on the so-called public option, so says a new Washington Post/ABC News poll published on Monday.

Fifty-seven percent of all Americans now favor a government-run insurance plan that would compete with private insurers while 40 percent are opposed, according to the poll.

That’s up from 52 percent support in mid-August, but still down from 62 percent in June.

What’s happened since the congressional summer recess  when anger over the prospect of a public option  heated town hall meetings across the country?

The public option (a government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers) is still favored by Obama and liberal Democrats as a way to increase competition and cut rising costs.

There’s still plenty of opposition from Republicans and other critics who argue that a public option  would be a government takeover and could drive private insurance companies out of business.

In the Senate,  lawmakers are trying to craft a single healthcare bill out of two separate proposals — one with the public option and one without. All three pending House bills include a public option.

Some numbers from the Washington Post/ABC poll:
- 57 percent of Americans now favor a public insurance option, 40 percent are opposed
- 56 percent favor a provision mandating all Americans to buy insurance
- 45 percent favor the broad outlines of the proposals now moving in Congress, 48 percent are opposed
-  seven in 10 Democrats back the plan,  almost nine in 10 Republicans oppose it
- 52 percent of Independents are against proposed reforms, 42 percent are in favor

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Photo credit: Reuters/Hyungwon Kang; Reuters/Jonathan Ernst  ( Pharmacist Sonya Safaie at work in Great Falls, Virginia; /Copy of House healthcare bill HR 3200 )

INDIANAPOLIS - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Sunday it was time to move beyond the controversy surrounding Barack Obama’s former pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

 ”We should definitely move on,” the New York senator said in response to an audience member’s question on the ABC television program “This Week.”

“We should move on because there’s so many important issues facing our country that we have to attend to.”

Wright, who presided over the Illinois senator’s wedding and baptized his children, has dominated the news in recent weeks after repeating his position that the United States deserved some blame for the Sept 11, 2001 attacks and had created AIDS to harm black people.

Obama broke with the minister last week, calling his comments “outrageous.”

Clinton, who is trailing Obama in votes and delegates who determine the Democratic Party’s White House nominee, has said she would have left the church where Wright presided. Obama has been a member of the church since 1992.

ABC moderator George Stephanopoulos pressed Clinton on whether concerns about Wright should  be raised with superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials — whose support she needs to overcome Obama’s lead and clinch the nomination.

“Well, people talk about it,” she said. “There’s no doubt they talk about it.  But what people I think are more interested in is what we would do and what kind of president we would be.” 

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jeff Haynes  

WASHINGTON - MoveOn.org is taking aim at ABC News over Wednesday night’s Democratic presidential debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, arguing the network’s moderators trivialized the issues in the campaign by asking “gotcha” questions.

The liberal activist group, which supports Obama, has posted a petition on its Web site and promises to run an ad protesting ABC if it gets 100,000 people to sign the petition.

During a nearly two-hour debate, Obama frequently found himself on the defensive as the moderators grilled him about his fiery pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his relationship with a 1960s radical and his failure to wear a lapel flag pin.

The Illinois senator was also asked about his remarks earlier this month to a San Francisco fundraiser in which he said small-town Pennsylvanians “cling to guns or religion” because they are frustrated with their economic woes.

Clinton, his Democratic rival, and Arizona Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, have criticized Obama over the small-town voter comments. Obama has said his words were ill-chosen.

“Moderators George Stephanopoulos and Charlie Gibson spent the first 50 minutes obsessed with distractions that only political insiders care about –verbal gaffes, polling numbers, the stale Rev. Wright story, and the old-news Bosnia story,” MoveOn.org said in a statement.

The group also accused the moderators of “channeling Karl Rove” for asking Obama if he loves the American flag.

In Raleigh, N.C., Obama also expressed frustration with the debate, saying “it took us 45 minutes before we started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people.”  

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Tim Shaffer (ABC News’ debate)