Survey Finds Health Care Top Vote Issue

Reforming the nation’s health care system, particularly by reducing costs, was the most decisive issue in Tuesday’s Pennsylvania Senate election, according to a poll of 1,000 voters released Thursday.

In the survey, 50% of the voters cited national health insurance as one of two issues that “mattered the most” to them in voting for either Democratic incumbent Harris Wofford or his Republican challenger, former Atty. Gen. Dick Thornburgh. In his upset victory over Thornburgh, a former two-term governor, Wofford steadfastly advocated national health insurance.

Concern about taxes came in second, with 29% citing it as one of two issues most important to them in the election. The recession and fear of job loss was third, at 21%.

“Clearly, Americans are increasingly concerned about health care and want their elected officials to do something about it,” said Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation in Menlo Park, Calif., which paid for the post-election survey, designed by the Harvard School of Public Health.

“Health care has arrived as a mainstream political issue,” he said.

And it prompted President Bush to concede on Wednesday, just before leaving for Rome, that one message from the election results was “try to help people with health care.” Trying to mute criticism that his Administration has done too little on the issue, the President added: “Stay tuned, because when we get prepared . . . we will be coming forth with something I think is constructive.”

During his campaign, Wofford provided few details of a national health insurance plan. And for that reason, the Kaiser-Harvard poll posed two alternative plans.

The respondents were about evenly divided between wanting an all-government plan (32%) or one that would require employers to provide workers with insurance or else pay a tax to help fund a public plan for those who cannot get insurance on the job (35%). Seventeen percent voted for the status quo.

The poll, conducted Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday, also found that 75% cited high cost as their biggest source of concern when it came to health care issues, followed by only 7% citing the lack of adequate coverage and 5% citing the lack of access to health care.

“This poll doesn’t tell you what kind of plan the public wants,” Altman concluded. “But it does tell politicians: You better have a plan, and the plan had better address cost. Solutions may vary, but politicians who fail to address this issue now do so at their own peril.”

Dr. Robert J. Blendon, chairman of the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Harvard School of Public Health, said that he found the results surprising.

“There was a lot of latent concern for national health insurance, at least in Pennsylvania. It’s greater than anything we’ve seen (nationally),” said Blendon, who designed the survey, which was conducted by the KRC Communications Research firm in Newton, Mass.

National health insurance surfaced in national polls as a significant concern in 1988, Blendon said. “The fact that it’s hung in there--and survived the Gulf War, survived the recession--means that it’s not a flash in the pan issue,” he said.