It seems like health care reform is something the public loves and at the same time the public hates. You constantly hear people talk about how expensive their insurance is, how bad their medical plans are, but as soon as there’s talk of health care reform it’s like people freeze up.

“It’s so complicated you can always finds something in the weeds to make people frightened,” Brown University political science professor James Morone said.

Morone is co-author of a book about presidents and health-care reform, including former President Johnson’s fight for Medicare.

“We have some wonderful telephone tapes in which Johnson described to a newly elected Ted Kennedy how to get Medicare passed,” Morone said. “He said, ‘Don’t let ‘em cost it out. Don’t let ‘em project the costs down the line. It’ll kill you.’ He thought that if people knew the full costs of Medicare it would never have passed, and he kept trying to lowball the estimates. And this was before the Office of Management and Budget. But we believe - we say in the book - that if we knew the costs, Medicare, one of the two most popular programs in America never would have passed.”