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New Survey of Public Views on Health Care Finds Some Common Ground Amid Stark Differences
 

Most Americans support proposals that would expand access to affordable health care coverage, according to findings from a new national survey supported by the Commonwealth Fund, the New York Times, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

As reported today by the Times’s Margot Sanger-Katz, that support is about evenly split between a Medicare-for-all-style plan that would upend the current health insurance system and incremental approaches that would build on the Affordable Care Act. Roughly another third of U.S. adults support approaches centered on shifting more of the federal government’s role in health care to the states.

The survey — the second in the “Health Care in America” series — also shows significant consensus among all U.S. adults when it comes to health care. For example, large majorities of Democrats and Republicans alike believe insurers’ coverage of preexisting health conditions should continue to be a requirement, as it is under the ACA. And, as the Times reports, there is also “relatively broad agreement” that people have a right to health care regardless of their ability to pay.

The key difference in public opinion lies in how the nation should achieve universal health coverage. “Most Americans want everyone to have coverage, but some people are willing to sacrifice more to get there than others,” Commonwealth Fund President David Blumenthal, M.D., said. “The people who are willing to sacrifice more are the people who have less to lose.”

 

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