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November 23, 2015 at 12:18 PM
About 51 percent of U.S. adults say the federal government is responsible for making sure all Americans have health coverage.
That percentage is down from a recent peak of 69 percent, recorded in 2006, but it’s up from 45 percent in 2014, and it’s up from a recent nadir of 42 percent, recorded in 2013.
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Justin McCarthy, a Gallup analyst, published those figures in a summary of results from surveys of 1,021 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, living in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, conducted from Nov. 4 through Nov. 8.
Gallup asked survey participants a separate question about whether the participants would prefer that the United States have a “government-run health care system” or “a system based mostly on private health insurance.”
Support for a “government-run system” has increased to 41 percent this year, from 35 percent in 2014. Support for a government-run system is at the highest level Gallup has recorded since at least 2010.
The percentage of participants who said they prefer a system based on private insurance fell to 55 percent, from 61 percent a year ago. That’s the lowest level of support for a system based on private insurance since at least 2010.
The younger the participants were, the more likely they were to support a government-run system. The participants ages 65 and over, who mostly qualify for Medicare, expressed strong support for private insurance: 63 percent said they want a system based on private insurance, and only 31 percent said they want a government-run system.
