Health Policy and the Presidential Candidates

… Despite the ongoing focus on the GOP’s opposition to the 2010 health care law, Kaiser’s August Health Tracking Poll suggests that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) isn’t Republicans’ top health care priority, with larger shares mentioning Medicare and the cost of health care and coverage as being important to their vote.

And when it comes to Medicare, as has been widely reported, a new Washington Post/Kaiser survey—fielded before the announcement that Representative Paul Ryan (R‐WI) would join Governor Mitt Romney at the top of the Republican ticket—finds that even a majority of Republicans (55 percent) prefer the idea of keeping Medicare’s status quo rather than changing to a system in which seniors are guaranteed a fixed amount of money that could be used to purchase coverage from a private plan. [cont. – PDF]

Kaiser Family Foundation