STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY - HEALTH PULSE OF AMERICA - NOVEMBER 2003

HEALTH POLICY AND THE UNINSURED:

A majority of Americans (86%) say that the presidential candidates' position on health policy will be important in deciding how they vote in next year's election; 21% say it will be extremely important.

This is coupled with majority support (54%) for repealing the Bush tax cuts in order to expand health insurance coverage. Support for keeping the tax cuts increases with household income, but even 50% of those in households earning more than $90,000 a year support repealing at least part of the tax cuts.

Nor surprisingly, Republicans are more supportive of keeping the cuts (51%) than either Democrats (18%) or Independents (26%), but even 38% of Republicans support repeal of the cuts. Among those who would like to repeal the tax cuts, there are divided views on whether tax cuts should only be repealed for the most wealthy or should be repealed more broadly.

Repeal Tax Cuts to Expand Health Insurance Coverage

Disapproval of the way in which President Bush has handled the health care issue has increased over the course of the year from 38% of respondents in a May Health Pulse of America poll to 45% in the current poll. Disapproval levels are high among both Democrats (67%) and Independents (48%).

Approval of the way George W. Bush is Handling Health Care Policy

There is some disagreement over the best way for the government to provide insurance to the currently uninsured with 47% of Americans in favor of the government directly providing health insurance to the uninsured and 42% in favor of medical savings accounts which are exempt from federal income tax. There is much broader support (77%) for the government to require business to offer private health insurance to their employees.

Methodology

The poll was conducted between November 5 and November 25 by the Stony Brook University Center for Survey Research. 814 adults were interviewed from across the nation. The poll is based on an RDD nationally representative sample of telephone numbers drawn from blocks with at least one-listed residential number. Up to 7 contact attempts were made at each selected household and individuals were selected at random within households. Findings are weighted using post-stratification weights for age, gender and census region in accordance with 2002 national Census statistics. The margin of error is plus/minus 3.4 percentage points for the entire sample.

STONY BROOK UNIVERSITY HEALTH PULSE OF AMERICA
November 5 - November 25, 2003

Note: Valid percent refers to the percentage of people that were asked that question.

© Copyright Center for Survey Research - Stony Brook University