Only about a fifth of Americans correctly identified the description of a Medicare-for-all system in a recent national tracking poll.
Four descriptions of a Medicare-for-all health care system were provided, and only 21% of respondents correctly selected “a single-payer system where the government, funded by taxpayers, provides essential health care to all Americans and eliminates private health insurance plans, including those provided by employers,” according to the tracking poll from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and digital media company Morning Consult.
The most common selection – chosen by 26% of the 1,003 registered voters who answered the question (about half of all the respondents) – involved “a system that ensures that all Americans have access to health care services and insurance through a mix of private health care and government programs such as Medicare and Medicaid.”
The other choices covered a federal system with available private supplemental coverage and another with the option of buying in to the existing Medicare system, the report said. Another 19% of respondents to the survey, which was conducted Dec. 18-19, said that they didn’t know or had no opinion.
Questions covering other areas of possible future legislation, which were answered by all of the 2,000 respondents, showed strong support for protection against surprise hospital bills (90%), reforming the Affordable Care Act (73%), and protecting the Affordable Care Act (63%), the U.S. Chamber and Morning Consult reported. The survey’s margin of error was plus or minus two percentage points.