Researchers from Indiana University's Center for Health Policy and Professionalism Research have found that support for government-sponsored health insurance for individuals under age 65 remains virtually the same regardless of how the plan is described or how involved the government would be.
CHPPR researchers developed three scenarios that describe a government health insurance plan for individuals under age 65 regardless of employment status. One scenario describes an optional "public health insurance plan," another describes an optional "health insurance program similar to Medicare," and the third describes a scenario where, similar to other countries, everyone receives government insurance with an option to supplement with private insurance.
Forty-three percent of respondents found the "public health insurance plan" appealing, compared to 44 percent for the Medicare-like plan and 39 percent for the single-payer option. The differences between the three options fell within the margin of error.
Support for the public option was strongest among Democrats with 63 percent finding a "public health insurance" plan appealing, 64 percent finding a "Medicare like" plan appealing, and 69 percent finding a single-payer option appealing.
These options garnered far less support among Republicans, with only 29 percent finding a "public health insurance" plan appealing, 30 percent finding a "Medicare like" plan appealing and 12 percent finding a single-payer option appealing.
Reasons cited for the appeal of the "public health insurance" and "Medicare like" plans included larger numbers of Americans who would be covered by health insurance, increased choice of insurance options and lower costs. For the single-payer option, the overwhelming reason for its appeal was the increased number of Americans who would be covered by health insurance.
For those finding the three plans unappealing, reasons cited included expected inefficiency with government run programs, a general dislike of government involvement in healthcare and concerns that this would increase healthcare costs.
Republicans demonstrated the strongest opposition to these three plans, with 45 percent finding the "public health insurance" plan unappealing, 37 percent finding the "Medicare-like" plan unappealing and 56 percent finding the single-payer plan unappealing. In contrast, 11 percent of Democrats found the "public health insurance" plan unappealing, 8 percent found the "Medicare-like" plan unappealing and 10 percent found the single-payer plan unappealing.
Age also played a role in the evaluation of these scenarios. Survey respondents 18 to 34 years old found the single-payer plan (53 percent) to be the most appealing of the three scenarios, while those over age 75 favored the "Medicare-like" plan (51 percent).
CHPPR is housed within the IU School of Medicine on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus.
The survey was designed and funded by CHPPR. Market Strategies International conducted the survey on behalf of CHPPR between July 29 and Aug. 5, 2009. A total of 609 adults living in the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia responded. The margin of sampling error for results based on the total sample is plus or minus 4 percentage points.