Polls have been all over the place about what the public thinks -- or what the public thinks it thinks because the confusion is evident -- about health reform, although overall the trend seems to be more positive since late summer and President Obama's speech to Congress. And as the FiveThirtyEight blog pointed out a few weeks ago, even the pollsters sometimes seem confused about what it is they are asking about. But here are a few highlights from the latest  New York Times/CBS News poll.

• Confusion reins. Thirty percent mostly support the president's health reform agenda, 23 oppose it and  46 say they don't know enough about it.
• Notwithstanding the confusion, Americans found Obama far more trustworthy than the Republicans on health policy, and 76 percent said Republicans had no clear health plan.
• Despite all the Baucus-bashing, the Finance Committee chairman's painfully prolonged attempts to reach out to Republicans and the president's support for bipartisanship seems to have had political dividends."By "a lopsided margin" those surveyed said Obama had tried to reach out to Republicans, and that Republicans had not reciprocated.
• Nearly two-thirds said congressional Republicans opposed Obama's bill only for political gain, while half said the Democrats were backing it for political reasons.
• Obama's overall ratings, though lower than in January, are still "reasonably strong at this point compared with recent presidents" (a bit higher than Ronald Reagan) and more voters are beginning to see the stimulus package as successful. On health care, Obama has a clear edge. By a 52 to 27 percent margin, the public said Obama has better health care ideas than the Republicans, and his approval rating on health is edging up (40 percent in August to 47 percent now).
• The public plan is still very popular -- two-thirds backed the idea of establishing a government-run health insurance plan as an alternative to private insurance. (Including, apparently, Bill O'Reilly).
• Myths and falsehoods propagated this summer linger. One in four still believe that organizations -- the so-called death panels (a fiction) -- will decide when to cut off care to the elderly, and nearly a third believes illegal immigrants would get taxpayer funded benefits. They won't. Just ask Joe Wilson.

FiveThirtyEight has done a lot on health polling in the last few weeks. Also the Kaiser Family Foundation put out  an interesting "data note" on what lies just beneath the surface of all the people who say they like their health care now. We're oversimplifying, but basically the Kaiser experts explain that healthy people are a lot happier with their health plans than sick ones, that more affluent people are more satisifed than poorer ones, and that an awful lot of insured Americans still worry about health care costs.