Majority of voters want Trump to address health care in State of the Union: poll

by Julia Manchester - 02/04/20 2:28 PM ET

A majority of voters say they want President Trump to address health care-related issues in tonight’s State of the Union address, according to a new Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey released exclusively to The Hill.

Sixty-four percent of respondents said they wanted to hear Trump discuss lowering the cost of health care and prescription drugs by passing legislation that targets global practices that levy higher prices for American consumers.

Another 58 percent of respondents said Trump should address reducing the price of prescription drugs, while 53 percent said they wanted Trump to talk about requiring drug companies, insurance companies and hospitals to disclose the real prices of goods and services.

“The voters have been clear that health care is the big unresolved issue facing them today,” said Mark Penn, the Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll polling director. “ObamaCare was a start, but they believe there is more to be done [and] they give the most credit to Democrats on this issue, so that puts the pressure of the president to deal with the issue effectively in the SOTU.”

Democrats campaigned heavily on health care in 2018, winning back the majority in the House. However, the party is currently dealing with its internal divide over building on ObamaCare or moving to a “Medicare for All” system championed by Democratic presidential candidates Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)

Trump campaigned heavily on repealing and replacing ObamaCare in 2016, but was never able to successfully do so.

The poll comes just hours before Trump is slated to deliver his State of the Union address. The event is likely to be tension-filled as the Senate impeachment trial against the president wraps up.

Speculation has swirled around whether Trump will mention impeachment in his address. The president frequently tweets about the issue, accusing Democrats of trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election.

However, Trump has struck a more unifying tone in past State of the Unions, making a concerted effort to stick to his script.

The Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll survey was conducted online within the U.S. among a representative sample of 2,527 registered voters from Jan. 27 to Jan. 29 by The Harris Poll.

Penn is an opinion contributor for The Hill.

Results were weighted for age within gender, region, race/ethnicity, marital status, household size, income, employment, education, political party and political ideology where necessary to align them with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.