Health care poll: Majority of Americans say it’s not the feds’ responsibility to provide it

A majority of Americans say it’s not the federal government’s responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care coverage, continuing a trend that began to shift after President Obama was first elected.

Fifty-two percent say it’s not the government’s responsibility compared to 45 percent who say it is — the third consecutive year where a majority have said it’s not the federal government’s responsibility, Gallup said.

But ever since the question was first asked in 2000 through 2008, a majority said it was the federal government’s responsibility. After that, Americans’ attitudes started becoming more evenly divided.

“Given that Obama campaigned on a pledge to expand the government’s role in ensuring healthcare coverage for Americans, and then pushed for and obtained passage of the landmark ACA in 2010, these tangible manifestations of a larger government role in healthcare most likely created a significant backlash, particularly among Republicans and independents,” Gallup’s Frank Newport wrote.

Indeed, about two-thirds of nonwhites and 60 percent of people ages 18 to 34 — two groups that tend to lean more Democratic — think the federal government does have such a responsibility. Meanwhile, about six in 10 whites and people ages 35 or older — groups more likely to be Republican — say it does not.

Mr. Newport goes on to write that Obamacare’s proponents point out that Americans favor a number of the act’s provisions when tested in isolation — requiring coverage of pre-existing conditions, for example — but a majority of Americans say they disapprove of the law, “even as the ACA is making progress toward its stated goal of expanding health insurance coverage.”

“That more than half of Americans think it is not the government’s role to make sure Americans have healthcare coverage suggests that opposition to the ACA may be centered more on its philosophical underpinnings, rather than on the specifics of its actual provisions and outcomes,” he wrote.

The results were based on a national poll taken Nov. 6-9 of 828 adults with a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.