Poll says more than half of Californians support health overhaul

Half of Californian voters support the new health care law, but many say "it's only a first of many necessary changes," The Associated Press/San Jose Mercury News reports. "In 1,522 telephone surveys of registered voters conducted in April, Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo says 30 percent strongly support the nation's new health care law, and another 22 percent somewhat support it. Compared to previous national polls, the new law is more popular in California than the rest of the country."

"Respondents were evenly split, at 46 percent each, on whether the new law would help control rising costs. Nonpartisan and independent, the Field Poll receives funding from the California Wellness Foundation, a health care advocacy nonprofit" (6/3).

San Francisco Chronicle: While 52 percent of voters in California say they support the law, 38 percent say they oppose it. "Those results show Californians are generally more supportive of the health law compared with the country as a whole. In a national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation last month, 41 percent said they held favorable views of the law while 44 percent had a negative opinion of the health law. Fourteen percent were undecided." (Kaiser Health News is a program of the Foundation) (Colliver, 6/3).

The Sacramento Bee/McClatchy: But the Field Poll also found what its director described as "mixed sentiments" and "not a completely rosy picture." For instance, "[o]ne in three Californians ... said they want the law repealed — even before many of its provisions can be implemented. And 58 percent said more changes are needed to fix what they perceive as a broken health care system" (Calvan, 6/3).

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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.