Poll: Americans Favor Health Care Choice over Coercion

January 17, 2018 1 min read Download Report

Elizabeth Fender

Director, Marketing

Elizabeth Fender serves as Director of Marketing at The Heritage Foundation.

Summary

Health care is at a crossroads in America. Obamacare is failing to maintain a semblance of feasibility. Those on either side of the health care debate offer widely divergent options to fix the broken system. Americans want more, not less, choice and options in their health care. A majority (58%) prefer freer markets and more choices in health care over a single-payer system (42%). Americans have strong feelings about choice. Nine in 10 agree that patients, not bureaucrats, should choose how health care is provided and that Americans should have more choice in this area. Nearly seven in 10 oppose both being required to purchase government health insurance and the elimination of their current plan under a single-payer system.

Key Takeaways

Nine in 10 agree, “Patients, not bureaucrats, should choose how health care is provided” (90%).

In health care, more support greater choice and freer markets (58%) than a single-payer system (42%).

A free market, when truly free, can reduce cost and increase access to care while accommodating aid to the poor to help them buy a plan of their choice.

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Topline Message

Everyone has the right to choose their own health care, and no one should be forced onto a plan that doesn’t meet their needs. A free market, when truly free, can reduce cost and increase access to care while accommodating aid to the poor to help them buy a plan of their choice. A government monopoly can never compete with that.

Messaging Priorities

Lead with the effect to the patient: choice, more options, lower prices, and more open access. Follow up with the effect to the states or system if necessary.
Choice is a powerful concept, made stronger with “right to choose” language. Frame health care choice as a right and single payer as an infringement of that right.
Avoid unnecessary politicization: Using politically divisive terms like “Drain the swamp” and referencing Obamacare without explaining how it should be changed unnecessarily divide audiences.
Power Phrases: Right to choose, health care choice for all, empower you to make choices for yourself, access to care, patients should choose.

Health Care Chart 1