In early October 1994, the Gallup Organization asked Americans how they felt about the fact that Congress had not passed a health care bill. A majority (53 percent) told the pollsters that they were "relieved," while 38 percent said that they were "angry." The results were not substantially different from those Gallup obtained when the organization first posed a similar question in August. Why would a population that seemed so supportive of health care reform a year earlier have come to this conclusion? And why would an issue that generated so much commentary as a potentially decisive election issue have "virtually vanished from the midterm campaign"? Those words, written by Washington Post columnist David Broder eleven days before the November election, summarized what most reporters found on the campaign trail. Did the polls mislead the policy makers about the importance of this issue and the urgency of reform? This monograph is a response to that question, a review of the attitudinal data collected during the 1993-1994 debate on health care reform, and a look ahead at how future reforms could fare in the court of public opinion.