President Obama, pay attention. The American people, despite a year-long debate, still don’t feel the fierce urgency of now when it comes to health care. In fact, a new survey from the Pew Research Center shows that health care doesn’t even rank among the public’s top five policy priorities:
Despite the ongoing debate over health care reform, about as many now call reducing health care costs a top priority (57%) as did so in early 2009 (59%). In fact, the percentage rating health care costs a top priority is lower now than it was in both 2008 (69%) and 2007 (68%).
Independents, that coveted crowd of voters who put Scott Brown over the top in Massachusetts, are also not clamoring for Obamacare. They want to see a focus on deficit reduction:
Six-in-ten independents say [reducing the budget deficit] should be a top priority, matching the views of Republicans and Democrats. Independents’ concern over the budget deficit has been stable over the past three years.
Unsurprisingly, Americans continue to yawn at global warming:
Dealing with global warming ranks at the bottom of the public’s list of priorities; just 28% consider this a top priority, the lowest measure for any issue tested in the survey. Since 2007, when the item was first included on the priorities list, dealing with global warming has consistently ranked at or near the bottom. Even so, the percentage that now says addressing global warming should be a top priority has fallen 10 points from 2007, when 38% considered it a top priority. Such a low ranking is driven in part by indifference among Republicans: just 11% consider global warming a top priority, compared with 43% of Democrats and 25% of independents.
Here’s the full list from Pew:






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