Americans are concerned that revamping the health care system would reduce the quality of their care, increase their out-of-pocket health costs and tax bills, and limit their options in choosing doctors, treatments and tests, the poll found. The percentage who describe health care costs as a serious threat to the American economy – a central argument made by Mr. Obama – has dropped over the past month.
Mr. Obama continues to benefit from strong support for the basic goal of revamping the health care system, and he is seen as far more likely than Congressional Republicans to have the best ideas to accomplish that. But reflecting a problem that has hindered efforts to bring major changes to health care for decades, Americans expressed considerable unease about what the end result would mean for them individually.
“We need to fix health care,” Mary Bevering, a Democrat from Fort Madison, Iowa, said in a follow-up interview, “but if the government creates the system, I’m afraid the quality of care will go down and costs will go up: We will pay more taxes.”
“It’s going to come down to regulation,” Ms. Bevering said. “What also worries me is whether we will be told what physician we can have.”
The poll was taken at a moment of extreme fluidity, both in terms of the complicated negotiations in the House and the Senate as lawmakers and the administration sort out the substance and politics of competing proposals, and in the efforts by both sides to define the stakes of the health care debate for the public.
With Congress now almost certain to recess until after Labor Day without floor votes on any specific plan, a vigorous advertising and grass-roots effort to shift public opinion is likely in the next month or two. The poll offers hope to both sides.
The changes in the public’s attitude over the past month, even if not huge, suggest one reason Mr. Obama sought so hard to get Congress to vote on some version of an overhaul before heading home.
Opponents of the proposed health care overhaul have already spent $9 million on television advertisements raising concerns about it, said Evan Tracey, the chief operating officer of Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political advertising. The advertisements are financed by the Republican National Committee and aimed at constituents of wavering lawmakers. The committee is also running radio spots.
Read more here: New Poll Finds Growing Unease on Health Plan