A Gallup poll shows that two-thirds of Americans think the US health care system has "major problems" (53%) or is "in crisis" (14%).
64% said that the "federal government has the responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage."
Gallup notes that this percentage has not changed significantly over the past five years, which sorta makes you wonder why the Dems haven't done more/better with this issue.
Among those polled, even self-identified Republicans agree there's a problem, and many agree that it's the government's responsibility to fix it:
- 56% of Republicans say the healthcare system is either in a crisis or suffers from serious problems, compared with 79% of Democrats.
- 44% of Republicans agree that the federal government has the responsibility of assuring universal coverage, vs 85% of Democrats
(I don't know why Gallup doesn't include percentages for self-identified independents, given that 1/4 of Americans identify themselves as such in polls.)
Unfortunately, Gallup's poll doesn't go any further in exploring solutions than the following lame question:
Which of the following approaches for providing healthcare in the United States would you prefer -- [ROTATED: replacing the current healthcare system with a new government run healthcare system, (or) maintaining the current system based mostly on private health insurance]?
Given the crudeness of the question, the results are somewhat surprising:
- 84% of Republicans say stick with the current system--okay, no surprise there
- 50% of Democrats say the government should take over--given the Repubs' demonization of anything being "government run" (except maybe our sex lives), that does surprise me
A final tidbit:
29% of those polled said that "cost" was the most urgent problem facing the health care system, and an equal percentage identified "access."
These seem to amount to the same thing, since cost is the thing that bars most folks access.
The full report is at:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/content/?ci=14098