Most Favor Piece-by-Piece Approach to Health Care Bill

With the Republican takeover of the House driven in part by widespread opposition to the national health care law, debate is already heavy in Washington over whether the new GOP majority will push for full repeal of the measure.

But a new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 52% of Likely U.S. Voters think Congress should review the health care bill piece by piece and keep the parts it likes. Thirty-nine percent (39%) disagree and think Congress should scrap the whole bill and start all over again. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

In February, 61% of voters preferred scrapping the plan and starting over, while 28% thought it was a better idea to build on the bill that was then working its way through the House and Senate. Democrats passed their version of the bill the following month without any GOP support.

Sixty-two percent (62%) of Republican voters like the idea of starting over again on the health care bill, while 71% of Democrats favor a piece-by-piece approach. Voters not affiliated with either party are more narrowly divided: 50% think Congress should keep the parts of the existing bill that it likes, but 42% say that bill should be scrapped.

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The survey of 1,000 Likely U.S. Voters was conducted on November 3-4, 2010 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.