Poll: Health bills remain unpopular, but individual provisions get high marks

CNN: "Although the overall health care reform bills passed by the House of Representatives and the Senate are unpopular, many of the provisions in the existing bills are extremely popular, even among Republicans, according to a new national poll. A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday also indicates that only a quarter of the public want Congress to stop all work on health care, with nearly three quarters saying lawmakers should pass some kind of reform. Twenty-five percent of people questioned in the poll say Congress should pass legislation similar to the bills passed by both chambers, with 48 percent saying lawmakers should work on an entirely new bill and a quarter saying Congress should stop all work on health care reform."  The survey was conducted February 12-15, and has a margin of sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points  (Steinhauser, 2/24).

In a separate article, CNN reports that the poll found that while "the public believes the Democrats should be the ones to take the first step toward bipartisan cooperation," 67 percent of respondents "say the GOP is not doing enough to cooperate with the White House, up 6 points from last April" (2/24).

And, "Public expectations are low for today's high-profile White House summit on health care: Three of four Americans in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll predict President Obama and congressional leaders won't reach agreement on a bill,"  according to USA Today. It adds: "There's also no consensus that the public wants a deal. By 49%-43%, those surveyed oppose passage of a health care bill like those that Democrats have drafted — and the foes hold their views more strongly than the supporters do. ... The poll of 1,009 adults, taken Tuesday, has a margin of error of +/-4 percentage points" (Page, 2/24).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.