News Clips

Americans Trust Democrats More Than GOP On Health Care

If Congress were to vote faithfully today with public opinion on proposals to overhaul the nation's health care system, there's a chance that nobody would win, according to a poll for The Washington Post and ABC News taken Nov. 12-15.

While a 56 percent to 42 percent majority approve of the way President Obama is handling his job, 47 percent approve of his handling of the health care issue, and 49 percent disapprove, according to The Post-ABC poll.

This fits a pattern with other polls on the issue showing people evenly divided on the plans to alter the delivery and payment for health care in this country. And in polls for The Post and ABC News, public opinion last spring favored overhauling the health system, but that sentiment flipped in August with more people disapproving than approving. The two sides of this issue have been virtually tied since then.

At the same time, people trust Democrats over Republicans by 50 percent to 37 percent to handle the issue of changing the health system.

Still, that doesn't mean they're deeply impressed by what they've seen so far.

Nineteen percent say their own health care would improve if the system were changed, but 37 percent say it would get worse, and 42 percent say it would stay the same.

Those are the same kinds of numbers racked up by former President Clinton's attempt to change the health care system in the 1990s. That effort withered without an up or down vote in Congress.

A separate poll for The Associated Press by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Stanford University found 57 percent acceptance of a proposal to raise income taxes on people earning more than $250,000 a year to help finance the government's share of health care costs. The AP said its polling showed that people were concerned about their own costs going up but were willing to tax wealthy Americans to push new costs onto the wealthy.

The Post-ABC News poll was based on telephone interviews with 1,001 adults nationwide and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. The AP poll was based on telephone interviews with 1,502 adults from Oct. 29-Nov. 8 and carries a margin of error of plus or minus 2.4 percentage points.