Voters Like Their Health Care, But Still Want Law Fixes

As President Trump and the Republicans’ new health care plan makes its way through the Senate, voters admit they like the health care they’re currently receiving but still see the need to fix Obamacare. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that:

--54% of Likely U.S. Voters think, given the problems with the existing national health care law, Congress and the president should go through the law piece by piece to improve it. That’s up three points from March and just two points below January’s all-time high of 56%.

--Thirty-one percent (31%) still think Congress should repeal the entire law and start over again, up from 25% who said the same in March. Thirteen percent (13%) want to leave the existing law as is.

--But 73% rate the overall quality of the health care they receive as good or excellent. That’s up from 67% in 2015, but still well below the all-time high of 82%. Just six percent (6%) rate the health care they receive as poor.

--Most Democrats and voters not affiliated with either major party want to go through the current health care law piece by piece to improve it. GOP voters are evenly split between a piecemeal approach or scrapping the bill entirely and starting over.

--Voters across the board give high marks to the health care they receive. Not surprisingly, those who like their health care are most likely to support improving the existing health care law piece by piece. Those who rate their health care poorly want to repeal the entire law and start over.

--Generally speaking, at least half of voters across other demographic categories support going through the health care law piece by piece.

Voters feel more strongly than ever that reducing health care costs is more important than mandating health insurance coverage for everyone.

Voters also tend to believe it’s the government job to make sure Americans have health care, even though they doubt the government will do it fairly and question whether taxpayers can afford it.

If Obamacare is indeed repealed, voters want a replacement right away, something Trump and Republicans in Congress are already working on.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on May 7-8, 2017 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Additional information from this survey and a full demographic breakdown are available to Platinum Members only. 

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