ICYMI: Americans Want To Build On What’s Working, Not Start Over With One-Size-Fits-All New Government Health Insurance Systems
WASHINGTON – As 2020 hopefuls back away from a one-size-fits-all new government health insurance system, a recent poll from Morning Consult and the Bipartisan Policy Center finds that “[i]mproving the current health-care system received the most support among voters, far more than repealing Obamacare or adopting ‘Medicare-for-All,” Bloomberg reports.
This tracks closely with previous polling. In fact, the second edition of Voter Vitals – a tracking poll conducted nationwide and in 2020 battleground states by Locust Street Group for the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future – finds that “as voters learn more about new government-run health care proposals, support for them is declining with a majority of voters preferring to build on and improve what we have today rather than start over with Medicare for All or the public option.”
Other recent national polling backs this up. A recent poll released by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) finds “support for a public option is slipping,” POLITICO reports. The poll also finds that Medicare for All “support wanes when voters hear trade-offs,” Becker’s Hospital Review adds. Kaiser CEO Drew Altman wrote in Axios that support for Medicare for All is “headed in the wrong direction” – meaning down – while “polling shows that support drops much further, and opposition rises, when people hear some of the most common arguments against Medicare for All.”
A national poll from Quinnipiac University, finds that “Medicare for All has grown increasingly unpopular among all American voters,” with a majority saying it’s a “bad idea.” Medicare for All is “a real problem for … candidates. Not just because of the cost, but because few swing voters want to dump private health insurance,” Axios adds.
Meanwhile, a recent Gallup poll finds that “[s]ome 71% of Americans rate their private coverage as ‘excellent’ or ‘good,’” CNN reports. “Americans continue to prefer a healthcare system based on private insurance (54%) over a government-run healthcare system (42%),” according to Gallup’s annual Health and Healthcare poll, which finds that a government-controlled health insurance system “remains the minority view in the U.S. This could create a challenge in a general election campaign for a Democratic presidential nominee advocating a ‘Medicare for All’ or other healthcare plan that would greatly expand the government’s role in the healthcare system.”
And a recent report from the University of Virginia’s Sabato’s Crystal Ball finds that “the performance of 2018 Democratic House candidates shows that those who supported Medicare for All performed worse than those who did not,” and warns that “presidential candidates would do well to take heed of these results.” The Washington Post explains in a recent story headlined “Why 2020 Democrats are backing off Medicare-for-all, in four charts” that “[p]olls show why they’re doing this. On the surface, the idea sounds as if it would appeal to voters.” But when voters are made aware of the many negative consequences of such a system, including the elimination of private insurance and need for higher taxes, support drops, they note.
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