The Kaiser Family Foundation has issued a new series of tracking polls to measure the salience of health care as an issue in the presidential campaign. While Iraq continues to top the list of public issues (44%), health care is now second on the list (29%) as one of the important problems government needs to address.
And health care may be increasing in importance as it starts to rise from its former tied position with the economy (13%) in the public mind. Half those polled (52%) want to see the candidates proposing major new health reform in their campaigns. Despite this public call for more action, many people (45%) can’t name a candidate, or say there is no candidate (21%), who is placing placing a big emphasis on health care. One in five do name Hillary Clinton. So the American public wants a reform plan — at least for now — but none seems to have hit the radar screen yet.
Remember this poll was taken before March 13th, so we have yet to see if an “Elizabeth Effect” will stimulate more public awareness of health care issues.
June 24, 2007 at 3:44 pm
[...] and Obama do lead the pack of candidates on this issue but the majority of the the public is still on the sidelines of this [...]