New Medicare for All Poll Hits a Record High

A new Medicare for all poll is showing the strongest support ever recorded for a single government health plan in the United States. Two-thirds of American adults now say they favor a national health plan, often called Medicare for all, in which everyone would get insurance from one government program, according to a KFF Health Tracking Poll released on Tuesday. The finding is a record high in KFF's polling on the idea and lands with the midterm elections deciding control of Congress less than a month away.

KFF conducted the September survey among one thousand three hundred twenty-eight American adults, most of them registered voters. Medicare is the existing federal program covering about seventy million people aged sixty-five and older or living with disabilities. Lawmakers including Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, have pushed to expand it, and Reuters notes that most developed countries already run single-payer systems.

The Medicare for all poll also found that support climbs even though the details stay politically charged. Roughly eight in ten Democrats and seven in ten independents back the proposal, while about two-thirds of Republicans oppose it. Among Republicans, one-third now favor it, up from about one in five in twenty twenty, and independents rose from fewer than six in ten to more than seven in ten over the same stretch. Democrats moved more modestly, from about three-quarters to more than four-fifths.

Support keeps rising across party lines

The latest Medicare for all poll marks the first time support has reached the two-thirds level since KFF started asking in twenty sixteen, when Sanders first made the idea a signature campaign issue. Views held steady for years, with at least half of adults favoring the proposal from twenty seventeen through twenty twenty, when about fifty-three percent said yes and forty-two percent said no. In twenty nineteen, opposition ticked up as the proposal drew heavy debate during the Democratic presidential primary.

Support falls when respondents are told the plan would eliminate private insurance, but it still stays above its old levels. About half of adults still favor it under that condition, compared with thirty-seven percent in twenty twenty. KFF reported that some progressive candidates in this year's midterm races have already made Medicare for all a centerpiece of their campaigns, drawing attacks from Republican opponents. The appetite for a redesign goes beyond the Medicare question: about half of adults across party lines say the health system has good features but needs major changes, and roughly a third say it needs a complete overhaul. Fifteen percent say it works well enough that only minor tweaks are needed.

Health care costs are driving the shift

Money is the throughline. Sixty percent of voters told the Medicare for all poll they are very or somewhat worried about affording health care costs, putting medical bills level with gasoline and ahead of groceries. A quarter of voters said they were very worried about health care costs, matching the share who said the same about gas and transportation. KFF president and CEO Dr. Drew Altman said a big health care bill is the least predictable household expense, which helps explain why it weighs so heavily. Frustration has been building all year: KFF senior survey analyst Audrey Kearney said the public is frustrated with the high cost of health care and that it may be feeding the desire for change, according to Reuters.

The cost squeeze is also political. Voters said they trust Democrats more than Republicans to handle health care costs by forty-two percent to twenty-two percent, and to handle the cost of living by thirty-nine to twenty-five. That edge has widened since April, and KFF found last month that enhanced tax credits for Affordable Care Act marketplace plans had expired, raising the stakes for people who buy their own coverage. Voters who have delayed a procedure over bills, or split pills because of prices, will recognize the pattern from Medicare's AI prior authorization pilot, which left patients stuck waiting on care approvals. The trend cuts across generations: even young women navigating the system today are factoring costs into medical decisions, as seen in the recent report on reproductive health access.

The numbers behind this Medicare for all poll were gathered in September and published by KFF on October sixth, alongside the full survey findings and a separate Reuters breakdown of the results. With Congress's makeup on the line in November, health care looks set to stay at the top of the campaign conversation through Election Day.