Health care and prescription drug costs top voter concerns in new poll

Americans say lowering prescription drug prices and other health care costs should be at the top of lawmakers’ to-do list, according to a new survey.

In the Morning Consult-Politico poll, 88 percent of Americans said that Congress should make lowering health care costs a priority, including 59 percent who said it should be a top legislative priority. Eighty-five percent said lawmakers should prioritize passing a bill to bring down prescription drug costs, with 50 percent saying it should be a top priority. 

Reducing health care and prescription drug costs, moves that enjoy support across party lines, outrank all other issues surveyed, including stimulating the economy during the coronavirus pandemic, at 84 percent; reforming immigration policy, at 71 percent; regulating tech companies, at 57 percent; and legalizing marijuana, at 43 percent.

During his first address to a joint session of Congress last week, President Biden called on lawmakers to pass legislation to lower prescription drug prices this year.

“Let’s do what we’ve always talked about for all the years I was down here in this body in Congress,” Biden said. “Let’s give Medicare the power to save hundreds of billions of dollars by negotiating lower drug prescription prices.”

Some congressional Democrats are pushing to add measures addressing prescription drug costs and a possible expansion of Medicare eligibility to Biden’s infrastructure package, though neither measure was included in the framework released by the White House earlier this year.

The Politico-Morning Consult poll was taken from April 30 to May 3, with responses from 1,991 registered voters. Its margin of error is plus or minus 2 percentage points.