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Fighting for Our Lives: The Movement for Medicare for All
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New polling demonstrates that nearly 6 in 10 Americans are supportive of Medicare for All in the United States, with only a quarter of voters voicing opposition to a universal health care system.
According to an Economist/YouGov poll published earlier this week, 59 percent of Americans back the idea of Medicare for All. Only 27 percent of those polled said they did not support the idea.
Medicare for All was backed by a majority of respondents across all income levels polled in the survey. The only demographics with majorities opposed to the idea were Republican-, conservative- and Trump-supportive voters.
Still, among those voters, a plurality agreed that the current health care system is inadequate. While 56 percent of voters overall had an unfavorable view of the U.S. health care system, among respondents who said they voted for Trump in 2024, only 46 percent said they viewed the system favorably, while 48 percent said they did not — an indication that voters across the political spectrum recognize a failure of the status quo.
The poll showed strong support for an increase in federal health care spending. Fifty-six percent of Americans want Medicare to be funded at higher levels, the poll found, while 1 in 2 voters (49 percent) said they wanted Medicaid to be funded more. Only 17 percent said Medicaid should be funded less or eliminated entirely.
This latest poll is consistent with others that have asked respondents about the idea of universal health care coverage. A Gallup poll in December, for example, found that 62 percent of Americans believe the federal government should ensure everyone in the country has health coverage, with only 36 percent disagreeing.
The U.S. is the only wealthy country in the world that doesn’t have a universal health care system. As a result, the U.S. spends the most on health care as a proportion of gross domestic product, while having the worst health outcomes among those wealthy countries.
The Economist/YouGov survey is also the latest to demonstrate that Americans have differing values from the Trump administration, particularly when it comes to health care. While Trump’s newly passed “Big Beautiful Bill” gutted Medicaid spending by hundreds of billions of dollars, poll after poll has shown that a majority of voters want just the opposite — more spending for the program, not less.
Because of cuts to Medicaid, Medicare and other programs, the “Big Beautiful Bill” is predicted to have dire consequences. Indeed, one analysis of the law suggests that the cuts to health care spending will result in an average of 51,000 excess deaths annually.
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