The United States is now facing two interconnected crises. The first is the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The outbreak is spreading rapidly. The second crisis is economic. As businesses shutter, the ranks of the unemployed are swelling. The stock market has tumbled precipitously, and GDP is projected to contract sharply. President Trump and the Republicans in Congress have done little to combat either crisis.
Read MoreThe Covid-19 virus is posing enormous challenges to the United States and world at large. We are suffering both an acute public-health emergency and a staggering blow to the economy. In order to save lives, protect working families, and boost our economy in sustainable and healthy ways, we need to take actions that are swift, bold, and well beyond what Congress has thus far been willing to approve.
Read MoreThe coronavirus is a public health crisis that requires collective effort and sacrifice to slow its spread. We are no safer, or healthier, than the least protected among us. If we leave vulnerable populations exposed to the virus, we are only accelerating its spread. And that applies to people confined in jails and prisons perhaps more than anyone else.
Read MoreOn March 3rd Democrats across more than a dozen states will go to the polls in an event dubbed Super Tuesday. More than 1,300 delegates, or nearly one-third of the total, will be in play.
As part of Data for Progress’s polling this Democratic primary season, we have asked questions not only about the current state of the race but also about support for progressive policies among likely Democratic primary voters. Here, we present our results for support for Medicare for All in a host of Super Tuesday states. Specifically, we asked likely Democratic primary voters,
“Would you support or oppose replacing private health insurance with a single government plan for everyone, sometimes called a ‘Medicare for All’ plan?”
Read MoreThe Affordable Drug Manufacturing Act, introduced into Congress by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Representative Jan Schakowsky would allow the government to manufacture generic versions of drugs in some circumstances. Because the legislation is likely to face strong industry push-back, we tested it in two environments: with and without a Democratic message in support. This is designed to simulate how the legislation would perform in an environment where it is massively outspent on television. We find that in both scenarios, voters overwhelmingly support the legislation.
Read MoreOver the last several months, Data for Progress has been working to test Medicare for All in a wide range of electoral environments, using a range of different vendors and our analysis of the evidence suggests that Medicare for All will remain on net positive even after facing rightwing push-back.
Read MoreOn December 10, Democrats in Congress passed the Elijah Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, which would allow Medicare to negotiate the price of many drugs with pharmaceutical companies and would prevent drug prices from rising faster than the rate of inflation. It is likely that H.R. 3 will be outspent on the airwaves by the right. This polling memo explores a new, innovative experiment designed to test how this spending could affect support for the policy and for Democrats in the 2020 election. We test opposition messages—even deceptive ones—in a five-way split sample, with a control. We find that H.R. 3 is durable to arguments, both when delivered by Republicans and when delivered by a “coalition of pharmaceutical companies and unions.” We also explore some other, over-the-horizon progressive pharmaceutical ideas, which enjoy strong support.
Read MoreVoters strongly prefer capping the costs of drugs at the lowest levels possible and invoking new fines and fees on pharmaceutical companies that raise their prices too high
Read MoreChildcare-for-all is a critical part of a progressive platform that is committed to gender, racial, and economic equity. Americans deserve a progressive policy solution that provides higher quality childcare options in every community.
Read MoreThe Affordable Care Act allowed Americans earning up to 138 percent of the federal poverty line to apply for Medicaid. This has benefited millions of Americans and driven historic reductions in the uninsured rate, but thirteen states continue to refuse to implement Medicaid expansion. This leaves millions of Americans in the coverage gap: too poor to afford private insurance, but unable to qualify for traditional Medicaid because they don’t belong to specific groups (such as people with disabilities) that are categorically eligible.
Read MoreDemocrats have proposed several major reforms to pharmaceutical pricing in the most recent Congress. Understanding public opinion in this domain is of critical importance to the Democratic platform. In this survey, we subjected Democratic proposals to realistic and clear Republican counterarguments. Voters remained overwhelmingly supportive of the progressive pharmaceutical policies.
Read MoreRecently, Data for Progress and YouGov Blue conducted polling on voters’ attitudes toward Medicare for All, the current healthcare system, and other policies to reform healthcare in the United States. We included items asking voters how they felt about the current system, and about whether they felt the government should be more or less involved in the government.
Read MoreAs the Democratic primary heats up, Democratic presidential candidates have begun sharing their plans to pay for Medicare for All. As part of our most recent survey, we polled some of these ideas alongside a series of items probing American voters’ attitudes toward healthcare, the health insurance industry, and Medicare for All. This memo briefly summarizes the results.
Read MoreAs Democrats move forward with legislation on prescription drug costs, their central message should be a moral case against pharmaceutical industry profits and the idea that patents are a privilege the industry has abused.
Read MoreOn behalf of Data for Progress, YouGov Blue fielded a survey including an item asking voters whether they supported permitting Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. Additionally, Data for Progress designed a message test to determine whether voters were more likely to support either policy reform allowing the manufacture of generic pharmaceutical drugs to help lower prices, or policy anchoring drug prices to prices in other countries if other countries’ prices are lower. This memo includes a full explanation of the item wording, sampling strategy, and weighting strategy.
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