Sixty-two percent of Americans say it’s the federal government’s responsibility to ensure everyone has health care coverage, a survey from Gallup found.
The figure is the highest it’s been in more than a decade. It slipped to its low of 42 percent in 2013, during the difficult rollout of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as ObamaCare.
It was at its highest in 2006, when 69 percent of Americans believed health care should be covered by the government.
Gallup noted that from 2000 to 2008, a majority of Americans consistently believed the government should ensure its citizens have health care coverage. As then-President Obama began to introduce the ACA, support for the idea shifted, and Americans became divided over the issue.
Public opinion shifted back, and most Americans saw coverage as the governments’ issue in the later years of Obama’s presidency, Gallup said.
Large majorities of Democrats have consistently believed the government should ensure Americans have health care coverage, but in recent years, independents and Republicans have also shared this view.
Currently, 32 percent of Republicans hold the view that government should provide coverage, which is up from 22 percent in 2020. Among independents, the view stands at 65 percent, up 6 points from 2020.
Gallup noted that as President-elect Trump prepares to take the White House again, public support for the ACA is just as high as it was during his first term.
Trump and Republicans attempted to unsuccessfully repeal the ACA in 2017, and he has indicated he is interested in trying again to dismantle the law, but the survey shows doing so could be a difficult task.
The survey results are from Gallup’s annual Health and Healthcare survey.
It also found that Americans are rating health care coverage and quality less positively than in the past.
The survey was conducted Nov. 6-20 among 1,001 adults across the country. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.