Poll: Americans Trust Democrats More than GOP on Health Care

Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans by more than double-digits to handle health care, according to a poll released this week.

An AP-NORC poll released this week found that Americans trust Democrats more than Republicans on health care by nearly 17 points. Forty percent of Americans said they trust Democrats to handle health care, compared to 23 percent of Republicans, 25 percent who said they trust neither, and 12 percent who said that they trust both parties to handle health care.

The poll’s findings on health care contrast with other issues such as foreign policy, immigration, and the economy, where Americans are roughly evenly split as to which party they trust more on each issue.

The poll arises as President Donald Trump said recently the Republican party will become the party of health care and tasked Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and other senators to develop a credible and viable alternative to Obamacare. Many 2020 Democrat presidential candidates such as Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) continue to push for a single-payer government-run healthcare system.

Fifteen percent of Americans said that Obamacare should remain in its current form, 42 percent want to keep the Affordable Care Act (ACA) but want changes, 22 percent said that Obamacare should be repealed entirely, while 18 percent only want parts revealed.

Republicans have had a difficult history with health care. President Barack Obama signed the ACA into law in the face of Republicans’ failure to present a credible alternative to his signature legislation. The GOP then gained historic majorities in Congress and won the presidency in 2016 promising to repeal Obamacare, but failed multiple times to repeal Obamacare after Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Susan Collins (R-ME), and Lisa Murkowski (R-ME) opposed GOP efforts. Republicans often struggled to agree on an Obamacare repeal and replace proposal, and many conservatives chided proposals for not doing enough to repeal Obamacare.

As Republicans continue to work on a viable alternative to Obamacare and Medicare for All, a Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) poll found that sixty percent of Republicans back a block-grant Obamacare repeal proposal that would allow states the flexibility to design their own programs.

Sen. Cassidy told Breitbart News that he continues to work on a two-pronged approach to fixing America’s health care system where Republicans pass bipartisan legislation on drug pricing and price transparency, and by offering a credible healthcare proposal alternative to Obamacare and Medicare for All.

“It protects the patient with federal protections but gives the states latitude to put in a program which works for that particular state, and builds upon the CHIP program, which just has a track record of success,” Cassidy said of his proposal, which would repeal Obamacare and block-grant health care to the states.