Washingtonians strongly support Medicare For All and oppose Trumpcuts, NPI poll finds

A new poll com­mis­sioned by NPI has found that vot­ers in Wash­ing­ton State are over­whelm­ing­ly opposed to the U.S. House­’s ver­sion of Trump­cuts while resound­ing­ly sup­port­ive of the idea of expand­ing Medicare to cov­er everyone.

In our lat­est statewide pub­lic opin­ion research sur­vey, we asked respon­dents how they felt about plans by fed­er­al Repub­li­cans to abol­ish or sab­o­tage the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act, and whether they sup­port expand­ing Medicare to pro­vide uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age for all Amer­i­cans. The answers that came back were profound.

First: By a near­ly two to one mar­gin, respon­dents said they pre­ferred the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act to the leg­is­la­tion vot­ed out of the House by Paul Ryan’s caucus.

We asked:

What would you rather have in place: the cur­rent Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act, or the new Amer­i­can Health Care Act passed last month by the U.S. House?

These were the answers:

• Patient Pro­tec­tion and Afford­able Care Act: 56%
• Amer­i­can Health Care Act: 29%
• Not sure: 16%

This find­ing shows that Wash­ing­to­ni­ans strong­ly sup­port the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act and want to keep it, which is (appro­pri­ate­ly) what Gov­er­nor Jay Inslee and Insur­ance Com­mis­sion­er Mike Krei­dler have been lob­by­ing Con­gress to do.

Most of the mem­bers of Wash­ing­ton’s con­gres­sion­al del­e­ga­tion vot­ed against the bill that passed out of the House to sab­o­tage the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act a few weeks ago, although Repub­li­can Dave Reichert shame­ful­ly wait­ed to weigh in against the bill and com­mit to vot­ing no until he knew his vote was not needed.

Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have recent­ly been strug­gling to cob­ble togeth­er their own ver­sion of Trump­cuts. Mitch McConnell has so far been unable to craft leg­is­la­tion that has the sup­port of fifty of his mem­bers (he’s not even both­er­ing to engage with Sen­ate Democ­rats at this junc­ture) so sen­a­tors are going home for the Inde­pen­dence Day hol­i­day recess with­out hav­ing vot­ed on anything.

We’ve seen a surge of much-need­ed grass­roots activism against Repub­li­cans’ efforts to take away the health­care of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans by gut­ting the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act. That activism is not only giv­ing Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan seri­ous heart­burn, it’s help­ing to solid­i­fy pub­lic opin­ion against their evil schemes.

Sec­ond: We want­ed to know how Wash­ing­to­ni­ans feel about build­ing on the Patient Pro­tec­tion Act (as opposed to sab­o­tag­ing it) and expand­ing Medicare to cov­er all Amer­i­cans. So we asked:

Do you strong­ly sup­port, some­what sup­port, some­what oppose or strong­ly oppose expand­ing Medicare to pro­vide uni­ver­sal health cov­er­age to all Americans?

These were the answers:

• Sup­port: 64%
  • Strong­ly sup­port: 50%
  • Some­what sup­port: 14%
• Oppose: 32%
  • Some­what oppose: 9%
  • Strong­ly oppose: 23%
• Not sure: 4%

By a remark­able two-to-one mar­gin, respon­dents to our poll say that we should expand Medicare so that it cov­ers every­body. What real­ly impressed us was that half of all respon­dents to the poll put them­selves in the “strong­ly sup­port” cat­e­go­ry. There is a lot of enthu­si­asm in Wash­ing­ton for uni­ver­sal healthcare.

Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates who want to be suc­cess­ful in 2017, 2018, and beyond would be well served to embrace this find­ing and make health­care for all a major facet of their cam­paigns. Health­care is a human right, and this research shows a major­i­ty of the pub­lic wants to see our laws changed to ensure that every­one is covered.

Most of the devel­oped coun­tries in the world have fig­ured out how to pro­vide uni­ver­sal cov­er­age to their peo­ple. We haven’t. We need to change that.

The sta­tus quo isn’t good enough. The Patient Pro­tec­tion Act was a step for­ward, but we need to take anoth­er step. Free­dom does­n’t stand still. We must focus our pub­lic dis­course on the idea of expand­ing health free­dom, as Bernie Sanders and Eliz­a­beth War­ren have pro­posed, as opposed to con­tract­ing it.

Our sur­vey of 887 like­ly 2018 Wash­ing­ton State vot­ers was in the field from June 27th-28th, 2017; all respon­dents par­tic­i­pat­ed via land­line. The poll, con­duct­ed by respect­ed firm Pub­lic Pol­i­cy Polling on behalf of the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute, has a mar­gin of error of +/- 3.3% at the 95% con­fi­dence level.