With health care emerging as the top domestic issue in the 2008 presidential election, the Kaiser Family Foundation in mid-July launched a new web site that will provide analysis of health policy issues, regular public opinion surveys, and campaign news and video coverage. Analysis of health policy issues, summaries of health reform proposals, and interviews with candidates and other key players in the health reform debate are among the material to be featured on the web site, which is free and contains no advertising.
Since March, Kaiser’s tracking poll on health and the 2008 election has found that health care is a top domestic issue that the public wants presidential candidates to address, trailing only Iraq on the public’s overall priority list. Meanwhile, 41 percent of adults are personally worried about health care or insurance costs, topping concerns about paying their rent or mortgage, being a victim of a terrorist attack or a violent crime, losing their job, or losing money in the stock market.
“For the first time since the early 1990s, there is a buzz in the air about the potential for a major debate about the future direction of our healthcare system,” said Kaiser president and CEO Drew E. Altman, “and how the issue plays in this presidential election will frame that debate.”
