75% Want Health Care Law Changed

Voters overwhelmingly want to see last year’s health care law changed, but there is substantial disagreement about how best to do it.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of Likely U.S. Voters want to change the law, while only 18% want it left alone. Those figures include 20% who want the law repealed and nothing done to replace it, 28% who want it repealed and then have its most popular provisions put into a new law and 27% who say leave the law in place but get rid of the unpopular provisions.

It is worth noting that a majority (55%) take one of the middle ground approaches—repeal and replace or leave it and improve. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Overall, 48% take an approach that starts with repeal. That’s lower than support for repeal measured generally in Rasmussen Reports weekly tracking polls on the subject.  It is likely that some people who prefer repeal when there are no other options for change are drawn to the idea of leaving the law in place and removing the unpopular provisions.

Just after Election Day in early November, 52% of voters said Congress should review the health care bill piece by piece and keep the parts it likes.  Thirty-nine percent (39%) disagreed and said Congress should scrap the whole bill and start all over again.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on January 11-12, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Do voters not affiliated with either party prefer to start with repeal or just want to fix the law that's already on the books? What do government workers prefer? Do private sector employees agree? Become a Platinum member and find out.