You don’t say? There has been a pretty significant shift in the attitude of Americans toward health coverage.
More Americans now say it is not the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage (50%) than say it is (47%). This is a first since Gallup began tracking this question, and a significant shift from as recently as three years ago, when two-thirds said ensuring healthcare coverage was the government’s responsibility.
Look at the chart below. It is pretty telling and you can clearly see the shift from what the attitude was last decade.
Why do we have the shift? For starters it’s all we’ve been talking about practically for the last 5-6 months. More people are possibly paying attention to what government involvement would mean looking at the monster bills that Pelosi, Reid and Company churned out. After the huge spending gloat people are also likely getting sticker shock and perhaps thinking about what this will do to our deficit and taxes down the road.
Looking further into the poll, the divide is among party lines with 77% of Republicans/Republican leaners who say it isn’t the government’s responsibility and 74% of Democrats/Democrat leaners who say it is. I wonder why they didn’t do a separate poll for independents. That would have been interesting to see.
Gallup also asked if the current system should be replaced, and 61% said no, with 32% saying yes.
They note the party breakdown.
Almost 9 out of 10 Republicans and Republican leaners favor maintaining the current healthcare system based mostly on private health insurance. Democrats and Democratic leaners favor the concept of replacing the current system with a government-run system, but Democratic opinion is less monolithic than Republican opinion; more than a third of Democrats would favor maintaining the current system.
Overall, it’s a good trend. And bottom line is that Americans want health care reform, but they don’t want it in the form of PelosiCare, and they definitely don’t want a complete government-run system.
Via Memeorandum