Krugman reacts to this oddity:

Why Americans hate single-payer insurance

Because they don't know they have it. A commenter points me to this:

At a recent town-hall meeting in suburban Simpsonville, a man stood up and told Rep. Robert Inglis (R-S.C.) to "keep your government hands off my Medicare."

"I had to politely explain that, 'Actually, sir, your health care is being provided by the government,' " Inglis recalled. "But he wasn't having any of it."

One of the truly amazing and depressing things about the health reform debate is the persistence of fear-mongering over "socialized medicine" even though we already have a system in which the government pays substantially more medical bills (47% of the total) than the private insurance industry (35%).

Meanwhile Matthew Yglesias provides data that shows that older people are the least likely to support universal healthcare. As he says:

I assume that were seniors not in a position to benefit from a special, wildly popular "universal health care for old people only" program that they would look more kindly on creating a universal health care program.

A friend of mine blogged another story almost identical to the Krugman one, but that showed up as a letter to the editor:

http://zombie-j.blogspot.com/2009/07/two-insanities.html