POLL: KFF Health Tracking Poll – July 2019

KFF Health Tracking Poll – July 2019: The Future of the ACA and Possible Changes to the Current System, Preview of Priorities Heading Into 2nd Democratic Debate

Key Findings:

• Health care is playing a prominent role at the start of the 2020 presidential primary season with Democratic candidates offering competing proposals aimed at expanding coverage to more Americans. The latest KFF Health Tracking Poll finds a larger share of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents preferring approaches that expand coverage building on the Affordable Care Act (55%) rather than replacing the ACA with a national Medicare-for-all plan (39%).
• The poll also finds a slight dip in overall favorability of the idea of a national Medicare-for-all plan. About half (51%) of the public now say they favor such a proposal compared to 56% in April 2019. On the other hand, nearly two-thirds of the public (65%) favor a public option, which would compete with private health insurance plans and be available to all Americans. But as with polling on Medicare-for-all, attitudes toward this change to the current health care system can be swayed by common arguments. For example, net favorability towards such a plan ranges as high as +53 and as low as -18 after hearing arguments either in favor of or against a public option.
• The survey finds that, while a majority of the public hold favorable views of Medicare (83%), the public also has largely favorable views of employer-sponsored insurance (76%) and Medicaid (75%). In addition, both those with Medicare coverage (95%) and employer coverage (86%) rate their own health insurance coverage positively.
• Health care, climate change, and issues affecting women are among the top issues that Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents want to hear the candidates discuss in the upcoming second Democratic presidential debate. Issues affecting women has consistently ranked among this group’s top issues for the candidates to speak about and when asked specifically what they want to hear about, at least three in ten overall offer topics related to reproductive rights (33%) and equal pay (30%).
• With the ACA and its various provisions under legal threat from an ongoing federal court case, this month’s KFF Health Tracking Poll probes the public on how important it is for different ACA provisions to remain in effect if the law is ruled unconstitutional. Most Americans say it is “very important” to them that each of the provisions included in this month’s survey are kept in place.