Health Care Law
56% Favor Repeal of Health Care Plan
Monday, February 21, 2011 Email to a Friend ShareThis.Advertisement
Most voters nationwide continue to favor repeal of the national health care law, but one-in-five now believe the plan will have no real impact on the federal deficit.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey of Likely Voters shows that 56% favor repeal of the health care law, including 43% who Strongly Favor repeal. Forty percent (40%) oppose repeal of the law, including 27% who are Strongly Opposed. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Support for repeal has changed little from last week. Weekly tracking since the bill was signed into law by President Obama last March has shown support for repeal ranging from a low of 50% to a high of 63%.
Fifty-two percent (52%) say the legislation is likely to increase the federal deficit, down six points from earlier this month. Since passage of the bill last year, the number expecting the law to increase the deficit has ranged from 51% to 63%. Only 15% expects the plan to reduce the national deficit, while slightly more (20%) say the plan will have no impact on the deficit.
The number that says the law will have no impact on the deficit is up seven points from two weeks ago and is the highest result measured in nearly a year.
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on February 18-19, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
Overall, 34% of voters think the health care law will be good for the country, while 55% say it will be bad. Since the plan’s passage, 48% to 56% of voters have said it will be bad for the United States. Only one percent (1%) now say the law will have no impact.
Fifty-six percent (56%) say the cost of health care will go up under the new plan, a view shared by 53% to 61% since last March. Seventeen percent (17%) disagree and expect costs to go down. Nineteen percent (19%) say they will stay about the same.
Most voters feel free market competition will do more to cut health care costs than government regulation.
Only 21% say the quality of health care will get better under the new law. Fifty-one percent (51%) say quality will get worse, while 21% predict that it will stay the same. Since last March, the number that thinks the new law will worsen health care quality has ranged from 48% to 55%.
While most Republicans (84%) and voters not affiliated with either major political party (59%) continue to favor repeal of the law, 71% of Democrats are opposed.
An overwhelming majority of Republicans and half of unaffiliated voters think the plan will increase the deficit, but Democrats are more evenly divided.
Fifty-six percent (56%) of the Political Class believe the plan will have no impact on the federal deficit, but 62% of Mainstream voters think it will increase the deficit.
Earlier polling shows that voters overwhelmingly believe the new health care law will cost more than projected.
Voters have consistently rated cutting the federal deficit in half by the end of his first term as the more important of several budget priorities the president listed early in 2009, but few voters expect him to hit his goal.
The documents the White House includes with the president's $3.7 trillion proposed budget for 2012 project that government spending will top $4 trillion in the next two to three years, but most voters aren't aware of that increase amidst all the talk of spending cuts.
Fifty-five percent (55%) of all Likely Voters say, generally speaking, that the president’s new budget proposal cuts government spending too little.
Then again, 70% of voters think voters are more willing to make the hard choices needed to reduce federal spending than politicians are. |
