There seems to be a confluence of factors that has led the health care debate to become the blank canvas onto which many Americans have directed their deepest fears and motivations. After all, we're living with a still unstable and uncertain economy, which creates all sorts of understandable anxieties. This is also the first major Congressional battle we've had after the changeover to a new administration, making this the first opportunity to really vent or celebrate–depending on which way you lean politically–this changing of the guard in policy terms.

So we find people passionately supporting this bill (and trumpeting its recent passage) who, just months ago, would have told you that their take on health care reform was public option or bust. Their newfound support has less to do with the details of this particular plan than it does their desire to seize the opportunity for any sort of reform, with the fear that that failure would undermine the remainder of this administration.

And we see protesters letting their deep-seated concerns about other, non-health insurance industry issues like welfare hand-outs and abortion seep out into angry, alarmist, and even hateful opposition to the plan. Keep in mind that I'm not suggesting that opposition to welfare or abortion are unreasonable views, but this level of agitation about those matters in response to this bill that has so little to do with changing the status quo on either issue? Wouldn't angry anti-government sentiment have made more sense after the big bank bailout started by Bush and continued by Obama?

We even see a small minority of people reacting to the passage of the bill by making physical threats or using hate speech. Again, over the matter of health care?

Though most of us deny it on a regular basis, make no mistake about it: our deep-seated prejudices and concerns color how we see the world around us. Just take the issue of race, for example. Let's step back from the ugly scenes of threats and epithets over the past few days, considering instead how race-related attitudes might relate to people's more passive perceptions of the health care discussion.

In a study published in the March 2010 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, University of California-Irvine psychologist Eric Knowles and two colleagues examined the relationship between survey respondents' level of racial prejudice and their attitudes towards "Obamacare." The research took place over several stages.

First, 285 community members (i.e., not just college students) completed measures of their racial attitudes in October 2008. Some of this assessment was explicit–that is, it consisted of point-blank questions about racial ideology. Some of it was implicit–reaction-time based tasks designed to assess the race-based associations and stereotypes that we are otherwise unable or unwilling to disclose (see here for web-based examples of this type of task).

One year later, this same sample was again asked to complete a questionnaire, this time concerning attitudes towards a health care reform plan that would end differential treatment of individuals based on pre-existing medical conditions and cap out-of-pocket medical expenses. Each participant read about the same reform plan. But the researchers varied the purported author of the policy, telling half that it was the Clinton plan from 1993 and telling the other half that it was Obama's plan (bear in mind that this was in October 2009, before there really was any such thing as a specific "Obama Plan").

What did the researchers find? When the plan was portrayed as Clinton's, respondents' personal racial attitudes were unrelated to their support for it. But when the exact same plan was portrayed as Obama's? In that case, the more implicit racial prejudice a respondent indicated one year prior, the less supportive he or she was of the health care proposal now.

The results of this study do not, by any means, suggest that any and all opposition to the recently passed health care plan can be explained in terms of racial bias or other forms of intolerance. Though I imagine various readers will accuse me of calling all opponents of the bill racist, that's not what I or the researchers in this study are arguing. So let me say it clearly and directly: there are various race-neutral reasons why one can, in good conscience, oppose this bill.

But this study also makes something else very clear: the argument that racial bias and other forms of personal prejudice don't factor into the current health care debate holds no water. Here you have a random sample from the community at-large, and though they (and their explicit racial attitudes) would tell you otherwise, their deep-seated racial associations predict their responses to health care reform. Not all the time, mind you–only when the plan is attributed to Barack Obama. When it's the exact same policy but labeled the "Clinton Plan," racial attitudes aren't a factor.

Like I said, the debate and all of its fallout are fascinating. You have all these people and constituencies literally shouting about the health care industry, but with a passionate fervor that seems to indicate something(s) much more personal in nature.

Yes, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But on the flip side, sometimes a debate about health care is not just a debate about health care.