Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., likes to claim that two-thirds of voters support his single-payer scheme for socialized health care. However, even a leftist think tank like KFF (formerly the Kaiser Family Foundation) has found that purported support is malleable — opposition grows as soon as pollsters point out potential drawbacks of the plan.
Case in point: a whopping 70 percent of single-payer supporters told KFF in September they considered it “likely they personally would be able to keep their current insurance” under “Medicare for All.” However, Sanders’ legislation would ban all private health insurance — and even abolish Medicare itself.
Now, a recent poll released by a Democratic group of likely Democratic primary voters shows that they have strong reservations about socialized medicine. It reinforces the belief that the only thing bipartisan about Bernie Sanders’ plan is the opposition to it.
Like Their Current Coverage
Days after the midterm elections, the “moderate” Democrat group Third Way released a memo summarizing an October poll of likely 2028 Democratic primary voters on health care. Unfortunately, Third Way didn’t release the poll questions and results in their entirety, but the excerpts show strong misgivings about Sanders’ radical overhaul.
For starters, fewer than one in three respondents (29 percent) say “the health care system needs to be completely scrapped and rebuilt,” as the Sanders bill would do. A plurality (46 percent) believe the “system needs major improvements but not a complete overhaul,” with a smaller percentage (20 percent) saying the system “needs some improvements but works reasonably well.”
Even more surprising: more than four in five respondents (83 percent) are satisfied with their current health coverage. Remember, this poll contains responses only from Democrats. Remember too that the Sanders bill, by definition, would abolish nearly all existing forms of health coverage, notwithstanding Democrats’ overwhelming support for their current plan.
Major Drawbacks for Democrats
The Third Way poll also explored Democrats’ potential concerns regarding a single-payer system. Top of the list stood an unsurprising response from a party that has loudly and vocally opposed both President Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. since they took office:
The most concerning criticism was that a future Republican president could gain control over decisions affecting reproductive care, vaccines, and other medical treatments. An overwhelming 82 percent of Democratic primary voters considered this a serious concern, including 52 percent who said it was very serious.
Other concerns spoke to the upheaval that such a radical policy change might inflict on the health care system:
Two-thirds (66 percent) expressed serious concerns that transitioning to Medicare for All could take years, delaying relief for families struggling with health care costs today. Nearly as many were concerned about higher taxes and government spending (64 percent) and the disruption of replacing existing health coverage (61 percent).
As a whole, the polling results reinforce a policy truism: while voters don’t like what it costs, most people are satisfied by the health care they receive — and worried that making major changes could only make things worse. Which, in the case of Sanders’ bill, they would.
Big Government Agenda
But for conservatives, the news from Third Way’s memo isn’t all positive. The group conducted the poll and published the memo in an attempt to sell voters on its own health care agenda, including the creation of a government-run health plan. With Third Way promoting this so-called “public option” as a default method of enrollment for people with no other health plan, people would soon have few other “options” for coverage. It’s another way of getting to socialized medicine, just via a slightly more circuitous route.
More importantly, the polling results show deep unease for Democrats’ radical agenda even among the party base. It’s another reason why conservatives must make the case as to how these proposals for yet more government involvement in health care will only make the problems that Obamacare exacerbated even worse.
