Poll says most Americans want to start over on health reform

In a new poll from Zogby International and the University of Texas Health Science Center, more than half of respondents said Congress should start over on health care reforms, The Hill reports. "Of the more than 2,500 people surveyed from Jan. 29 to Feb. 1, 57 percent agreed with a statement that Congress should start over — which is exactly what Republicans are demanding and what President Barack Obama insists he will not do." More than half also said they would prefer "Congress to tackle healthcare reform on a step-by-step basis" instead of in a comprehensive fashion. "Overall, opposition to the Democrats' healthcare reform bill outstrips support by a sizable margin: 50.8 percent oppose the bills compared to 40.3 percent who said they favor them" (Young, 2/16).

Meanwhile, Politico's Live Pulse blog reports on the results of a CNN-Opinion Research poll that found 44 percent of registered voters don't think their member of Congress should get another term. "That's a 6-percentage-point bump from the weeks leading up to the last election. … Since 1991, the tally has typically hovered in the teens or low-20s. However, in the fall of 1994, before Republicans took control of the House for the first time in 40 years, it hit 30. And in October 2006, before Democrats won it back, it edged above 30 again." Those numbers might not be good for health reform, Politico reports, but there may be a silver lining for Democrats. Specifically, "56 percent of registered voters don't think 'most Republican members of Congress' deserve to be reelected compared with the 54 percent who think 'most Democratic members of Congress' aren't worthy of another term" (O'Connor, 2/16).

---

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.