Who Do the Voters Prefer on Health Care Reform?

The big question -- when not discussing the economy -- is who will win the U.S. presidential race this year. It is an historic ticket of each side of the aisle combined with a colorful, and at times shocking, stage show before the media. Discussion of which way things will go is far beyond propriety for this blog to address.

What we can address and investigate is the positions of these two fine men on health care's future course. Today, thanks to a poll recently released, we can take a quick pulse on the American public and see how they feel about the proposals put forth by the White House hopefuls via News-Medical.net:

According to a report released today by the University of Michigan C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health, the majority of likely voters polled selected Obama as their top presidential pick to handle the country's biggest health care issues, including the high cost of health insurance, and the millions of U.S. adults and children without insurance.

One deviation from that was found amongst voters over the age of 65 who felt McCain has a better grasp of the prescription drug cost issue. Other than that, those polled generally show a marked leaning towards Obama's proposed handling of the health care crisis. Here are some of the numbers from the report broken out by health care issue:

• Health insurance is too expensive for families. The vote: McCain (38 percent) / Obama (62 percent)
• Many people can't afford prescription drugs. The vote: McCain (43 percent) / Obama (57 percent)
• Millions of children are uninsured. The vote: McCain (35 percent) / Obama (65 percent)
• Millions of adults are uninsured. The vote: McCain (35 percent) / Obama (65 percent)
• Some people get lower quality of health care than others. The vote: McCain (38 percent) / Obama (62 percent)

On this subject, it would seem that the Democratic Party is much more in line with the will of the (polled) people. Only time will tell how much influence that will have on the final election outcome. I would suspect that a lot of it will ride on the news about the economy. After all, it was the meltdown on Wall Street that bumped health care down the priority list of the American public. Extreme good or bad news on the economy will profoundly affect how much impact this data ends up having.

For the complete report and a podcast about its results, go visit C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health.

SOURCE: "Voters pick Obama to tackle nation's health care problems" 10/13/08
photo courtesy of Torley, used under its Creative Commons license