Memo: The Public Supports A Public Option For Drugs
By John Ray, YouGov Blue and Sean McElwee, Data for Progress
Executive Summary
Voters are overwhelmingly supportive of allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices, with 84 percent of US voters supporting this policy and only 5 percent opposing it.
Ninety-one percent of Democrats, 81 percent of independents, and 77 percent of Republicans support allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices. Opposition was nearly nonexistent, with only 3 percent of Democrats, 5 percent of independents, and 7 percent of Republicans actively opposing the policy.
Voters randomly assigned to read a message about a policy allowing competition from generic pharmaceuticals were more likely to support that policy when the message centered patients’ ability to pay rather than international price comparisons.
Even with Republican arguments against generic competition, majorities of Democrats and independents supported generic competition—as do just under half of Republicans.
