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Most participants said they were satisfied with the quality of their health care, but there was widespread concern about costs. Nearly half of those with insurance said an employer had cut back on benefits or required them to pay more for their benefits in recent years.
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A quarter of those with insurance said someone in their household had gone without a medical test or treatment because insurance would not cover it. Six in 10 of those without insurance said someone in their household had gone without care because of the cost.
More people now see guaranteeing health insurance as important than did so at the end of the Clinton efforts in 1996. At that time, 56 percent polled said it was the government?s responsibility to do so, and 38 percent said it was not. In the current poll, 64 percent said the government should guarantee health insurance for all; 27 percent said it should not.
Moreover, an overwhelming majority in the current poll said the health care system needed fundamental change or total reorganization, just as they did in the early 1990s, when a deep recession and soaring health care costs galvanized the public and spurred the Clinton drive.
But now, as then, this concern did not translate into a consensus on what should replace it.
One question offered a choice between the current system and a national health insurance program covering everyone, administered by the government and financed by taxpayers. Thirty-eight percent said they preferred the current system, 47 percent the government-run approach.
Robert Blendon, an expert at Harvard on public opinion and health, said politicians had to find some compromise between these philosophical divisions on the role of government, which are deep-seated in American culture, or ?we?re going to have the same train wreck we did before.?
The Clinton plan, itself an attempt at a compromise, collapsed under attacks from an array of interests, including the insurance industry, which warned that the plan amounted to a big government takeover.
Mr. Blendon noted that many politicians were seeking a blend between the private market and the government in their health plans.
