Public Trusts Democrats More To Fix Health Care System

The charts above reflect the results of the latest Politico / Morning Consult Poll -- done between March 29th and April 1st of a national sample of 1,945 registered voters, and has a 2 point margin of error.

Donald Trump has bragged that he will become known as the "health care president", and the Republican Party would be the "health care party". He said this in spite of the fact that Republicans have no plan (and neither does Trump) to fix the health care system.

Trump tossed the ball to the Senate to come up with a plan, but Majority Leader McConnell tossed it right back. He made it clear to Trump that the Senate would NOT take up health care before the 2020 election. He knows (as do other Republicans) that one of the biggest reasons they got spanked in the 2018 election was health care, and they have no intention of trying to make it a campaign issue in 2020.

It may be too late though. Trump's joining the court fight to completely overturn Obamacare has made it clear where Trump and the Republicans stand on health care -- and you can bet the Democrats will ride that horse hard in the 2020 election.

And they should. As the top chart shows, about 40% say they trust the Democrats more to fix health care, while only 19% say they trust the Republicans more. This is not an issue the Republicans can win on.

The second chart shows how the public feels about a single-payer (Medicare For All) system. While 52% support the idea, only 28% support it strongly. That's probably not enough support to get it passed -- even though some Democratic presidential candidates are running on the idea.

I think a better idea right now is to create a public option. Cover all of the poor with that option, and let everyone else buy into it (on a sliding scale according to income).

The fly-in-the-ointment preventing large-scale support for a single-payer system right now is employer-provided insurance. A significant majority of Americans get their health insurance through their employer (a corporation or business).

Employers should be allowed to forego private insurance (which is very expensive) and buy into the public option for their employees (which would provide good care and coverage for much less money). Once employers realize how much they will save (and it would be substantial), they will move toward the public option. Once a majority of corporations and businesses do this, it will be a simple final step to go to a true single-payer system (Medicare For All).