Reports surfaced this week that McDonald’s may cut health insurance for its nearly 30,000 hourly workers unless U.S. regulators waive a requirement of new health care legislation championed by President Barack Obama.

The words health, healthcare or insurance are currently appearing in an astounding 41% of conversations around McDonald’s online.

Last week, the U.S. House passed very new, very controversial bill over health-care. This new legislation transforms rules governing the medical industry to ensure that tens of millions of uninsured Americans get medical coverage. While the topic is blatant big talk on television and in the papers, it’s still hard to get a grasp on how ‘we the people’ are actually reacting to this historical milestone. To gain better insight as to how the public actually feels, we look turn to the trusty internet & social media to provide us with some answers.

First, lets look at overall buzz. Below we see that there were over 30,000 posts in the days around the date the reform was signed into law. Obviously, people were very opinionated on the topic and felt the need to say so on the internet. Next, lets look at content.

This word cloud shows the most frequent terms associated with the posts, and are then classified by sentiment. Green depicts phrases with highly positive sentiment, red shows negative references, and grey lists neutral ones. As usual with government battles, the Democrats and Republicans find themselves in a battle.

Peeping into overall user sentiment, Social Radar tells us that a hefty 59% of posts directly related to the health-care reform were positive.

Here we see the most popular words associated with each emotion, along with the percentage of posts the terms appeared. We are able to dissect and determine the underlying issues that the public is conveying on the social web (Turns out that a lot of it has to do with the country’s deficit).

So the million dollar question that I’m sure everyone knows the answer to. Where are these conversations happening?

And you guessed it. Twitter was the favorite platform, with blogs falling into 2nd place. What do you think about all this? Feel free to leave a comment.

Last Friday U.S. House leaders outlined a $1 trillion health care overhaul that would provide insurance for more Americans and give them new rights in dealing with insurers. The reform plan could ultimately lead to coverage for 95 percent of Americans and create a new government-run insurance program.

President Obama has made health reform a priority and has said that continuing with the status quo will bankrupt the country. The reform bills promise more affordable insurance and relief to those with large out-of-pocket health costs. But high-income people and some businesses would face new taxes.

How do Americans feel about the legislation?

A USA Today/Gallup poll finds 56% of Americans in favor and 33% opposed to Congress’ passing major healthcare reform legislation this year. However, support is sharply split along party lines, with 79% of Democrats in favor, compared with only 23% of Republicans. President Obama urged Democratic senators to keep trying for a bipartisan deal on health care reform, but left open the possibility that they might have to pass a bill without Republican support.

We used Social Radar analytics to measure sentiment around health reform. Social Radar analyzed billions of online messages and provided in-depth analysis specific to references of health reform as the subject of conversation to get key sentimental insights of the masses. Overall results show 56% of health reform references were positive, mirroring the Gallup poll results.

We further analyzed these conversations throughout the month of July to determine key topics discussed, and in what context. The word cloud below displays these key topics used in health care reform conversations online, with colors from green to red representing positive/neutral/negative tone of each topic.

There certainly appears to be some negativity around this plan directed toward Obama, tax and cost.

The chart below displays the data in another way, showing a trend of the sentiment/tone and total conversation volume around health care reform over the last month.

As the conversations continue to grow, we are starting to see a slight increase in negative tone. We will be keeping an eye on this topic as the Obama administration works toward achieving major health reform this year.

President Obama has been busy during his first 100 days in office — confronting an economic crisis, addressing rising healthcare costs, promoting clean energy innovation and restoring confidence. Nearly two out of three Americans approve of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. We decided to measure web chatter volume for the biggest issues during President Obama’s first 100 days. Not surprisingly, chatter around the stimulus package led all topics overall. But at the moment, healthcare is the hottest topic.