Healthcare trumps other election issues

The Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a survey that asked people to identify which issues are important to them in the upcoming election. 30% of the respondents indicated that healthcare was the most important issue (71% of the respondents rated it as "very important"). This finding is perhaps not surprising given the backdrop of the rising health insurance premiums and the controversy around the Affordable Care Act. What is interesting, though, is that mandating coverage for preexisting conditions is so popular that Republican lawmakers are apparently toning down their rhetoric. Clearly, health is important to people and the rising costs of healthcare poses a problem.

The survey was conducted among approximately 1,200 adults with a roughly even split of party identification (among Democrat, Republican, and independent). The survey also includes an interesting breakdown of how people from different party identifications felt about various issues.