Most Americans Want Federal Government to Provide Health Insurance According to New Poll

With the race for the White House in 2008 already beginning with the usual heat, access to affordable health insurance and healthcare promises to be one of the lead issues in campaigns for the nomination on both sides of the aisle. While most political pundits agreed that the war in Iraq was the catalyst for the mandate that overthrew Republican control of the House and Senate, and still tops the list of issues of greatest concern to most Americans - a recent poll released by CBS and the New York Times found that the majority of Americans want some kind of Federally guaranteed health coverage, especially for children.

In the Poll only 24 percent of those surveyed said they were satisfied with the Bush Administrations handling of healthcare issues, and 62 percent admitted that they believe that the democrats would have better luck in solving the nations healthcare problems.  Also interesting in the results of the poll is that most Americans said they would be willing to "dig deep" in terms of additional taxes and repeal of tax cuts - if it meant that health insurance could be guaranteed for all, in particular for kids.

Hillary Clinton may be seeing a bit of a vindication from her reviled efforts on Universal Healthcare years ago during her husband's administration. Not only do several of the "healthcare for all" initiatives already in place in states like Massachusetts and California strongly resemble her original plan, as does the plan of her competitor for the Democratic nomination Senator John Edwards - today 64 percent of Americans say they would favor Universal Health Coverage provided by the Federal Government, as opposed to only 56 percent back in the waning years of the Clinton Administration.

While traditionally Democrats have always been strong advocates of healthcare reform, the surprise in this recent poll is that it seems that more Republicans and independents are now in favor of some form of affordable medical insurance for all Americans.  The poll showed overwhelming support regardless of political affiliation of the Children's Health Insurance Program, which covers many low- and moderate-income children and is up for renewal in Congress this year. There are more than 8 Million children in the country that currently go without any kind of health coverage. More than 80% of those in the survey said they were in favor of increasing the current program to cover all of these uninsured children.

And finally a great majority of those poled, nearly 8 in 10, said that providing affordable health insurance to all Americans was far more important than maintaining the tax cuts put in place by the current administration.