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Kansas City, MO – A majority of likely Kansas voters support the idea that all Americans should have health coverage. That's according to a new report by the Ad Astra Institute of Kansas. KCUR's Elana Gordon reports.
A survey of five hundred Kansans found that nearly seventy percent of respondents believe all people should have some kind of health insurance. David Burress is an economist at the Ad Astra Institute and wrote the report. He says Kansans are split when it comes to how health care should be provided even though a majority of respondents say they favor such widespread coverage.
Burress: We gave them five options and asked them which one they liked best. One of the options was the current insurance system. Only twenty three percent supported that. Another option we had was publicly funded health coverage like Medicare, but for everybody. This got basically the highest support - about twenty seven percent. Then we asked about affordable private insurance subsidized by the government that everyone could buy. That got almost as high as the Medicare option.
Burress also says only one in ten respondents support a system where people are required to purchase insurance. The self-described 'center/progressive' think tank surveyed Kansas voters from across the state. Half of respondents were registered as Republican, a quarter Democrat, and a quarter Independent. The Kansas Health Consumer Coalition, a non-profit advocacy group, also edited the institute's final report.
Funding for health care coverage on KCUR has been provided by the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City.
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