Health Care and the Generational War

Josh Marshall at TPM has a very interesting observation about the CNN poll from this morning that 50% of those polled supported health care reform, with 45% in opposition. The money quote:

There's a generational divide hovering around the age of 50, with most people younger than 50 supporting the president and those over 50 opposing him.

It's an interesting number since -- not to put too fine a point on it -- people over 50 are disproportionately people who already have guaranteed single-payer government health care. Why that would be is a whole other question in itself.But my sense is that this is less a matter of experiences with health care per se than it is a 'mapping' onto the health care debate of the generational divide that characterized the 2008 election.