Finally, while the complex attitudes on health care reform do not easily reduce to a single question, the analysts at the Kaiser Foundation have one they are watching closely: whether Americans think their own families will be better off if major health reform legislation is enacted.
In September 1993, according to Kaiser President and CEO Drew Altman, a CNN/Time/Yankelovich poll in September 1993 found Americans divided on whether the Clinton plan would make them or their families better (20 percent) or worse off (21 percent), with the majority (57 percent) believing they would be unaffected. A year later, the percentage who thought they would be worse off had increased to 37 percent. Altman attributes the rise to a fear that "the Clinton proposal might force them out of their current health care arrangements."
The most recent Kaiser tracking survey finds 39 percent of Americans saying they would be better off "if the president and Congress passed health care reform," while 16 percent say they would be worse off. "The number to watch, then," say the Kaiser analysts, "may be the 36 percent who currently say health care reform wouldn't affect them at all."