Another point Data for Progress tested was “removing Medicare’s ability to negotiate lower drug prices.” That idea was also widely unpopular, with 73% against and 19% in favor.
And that feels too relevant in this campaign.
The ability to negotiate drug prices in Medicare is something the federal government only acquired with the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and only began using this year. Republicans have repeatedly said they want to repeal that law, which Democrats passed and President Joe Biden signed.
And while Republicans have generally avoided specifying whether they want to include new drug-negotiation authority as part of that rollback, a few have expressed interest, most recently in interviews with Axios last week. Both Project 2025 and the Republican Study Committee proposals also discuss repealing or at least reducing the government’s new authority to lower drug prices.
Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of these findings is the extent to which they cut across partisanship and ideology. For both protection from preexisting conditions and drug bargaining power, opposition among Republican voters was nearly as strong as among the general population.
There were some health care issues in the survey where the results weren’t so skewed — for example, on whether to impose “stricter work requirements for Medicaid recipients.” But even on that idea, the poll found 48% of the general population opposed, and only 39% in favor.
What the Polls Can’t Say – and What They Can Say
For this poll, Data for Progress surveyed 1,283 voters and weighted the results to account for age, gender, race, geography and what respondents remembered about their voting history. The poll took place in the field on Sept. 12 and 13, and the results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Data for Progress is a left-leaning agency, but its results largely match the findings of polling organizations such as KFF, the independent research organization that has long been the gold standard for health care polls.
One thing the Data for Progress poll didn’t test was whether opposition to the Republican health care agenda would actually translate into Democratic support in November. But Danielle Deiseroth, executive director of Data for Progress, told HuffPost there’s good reason to think health care will help Democrats if they raise the issue.
“These are some of the most immediately impactful policies that government can take,” Deiseroth said, adding that “what we also know is that Democrats are more trusted by voters to handle the issue of health care. So this is friendly territory for Democrats.”
As usual, the polls say nothing about the merits of the policy proposals tested or the arguments behind them.
Conservatives argue that regulation of insurance and drug markets ultimately makes society worse off by distorting free markets, creating shortages, and discouraging innovation. Liberals typically counter that free markets in health care don’t work and that the types of interventions Democrats have pushed through can improve access and quality.
There is no right or wrong in those arguments, because they depend on judgment and priorities. The state of public opinion on health care is a different story ― and a very clear one, as this latest poll shows.
