Memo: Voters Support a Public Option For Health Insurance
By Ethan Winter and Jacob S. Hacker
Introduction
As part of a mid-September survey, Data for Progress sought to test attitudes among likely voters nationwide toward a public option for health insurance. The survey portrayed the public option as a system of health insurance administered by the federal government that would be available to all Americans. This is the vision of the public option embodied in the Biden campaign’s health plan and the “Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force” recommendations, which outline an ambitious health agenda that goes well beyond shoring up the Affordable Care Act (ACA). It is also consistent with the growing call to add a public option to the ACA by Democratic candidates in hotly contested Senate races in this election cycle.
To start, we gauged how likely voters felt about government involvement in health insurance generally. Next, we focused on how likely voters thought a public option might be integrated into the country’s current public-private system of health insurance. We then measured support for a variety of ways the public option could be constructed. Finally, we tested the relative persuasiveness of common arguments both for and against the basic idea.
Overall, we find that voters are extremely supportive of the public option, and level of support is likely to be sustainable even in the face of common arguments against the public option.
