Congress can't seem to reach a consensus, but the American people have overwhelmingly made up their minds: we need a public health insurance option.

A new poll conducted by NBC and the Wall Street Journal [.pdf] is the latest in a series of polls to show convincing support for a choice between a private or public health insurance plan among the American people:

On the one hand, the American public overwhelmingly favors a choice between getting insurance coverage either through the private market or a government run option. Indeed, 76 percent of respondents said it was either "extremely" or "quite" important to "give people a choice of both a public plan administered by the federal government and a private plan for their health insurance." [From the Huffington Post]

The poll also showed clear majority support for key ingredients to fixing health care like shared responsibility among employers, government, and individuals to solve the health care crisis with strong protections for small businesses. In fact, every major proposal in President Obama's health care plan received strong support.

There's just one problem: many people didn't know it was the President's plan. Despite his aggressive push to pass health care reform, more than a third of all Americans still don't know enough about the President's plan for health care to know whether or not they support it. Once the pollsters described Obama's plan, people supported it overwhelmingly.

So that's where we come in. We've got to tell everyone we know that the President has proposed a strong plan to fix health care and it's moving through Congress as we speak. We're going to discuss the best way to do that tonight on a conference call with Senator Chris Dodd at 6pm EDT.

I hope you'll join us, and I hope you'll help us urge Congress to join the American people in supporting President Obama's plan to solve the health care crisis once and for all.