Most voters trust Hillary Clinton more than Donald Trump on a range of healthcare issues, a new poll finds.
Respondents to a Kaiser Family Foundation poll released Thursday said that as president, Clinton would do a better job than Trump in nine health areas. Clinton beat Trump on all of the issues, including the future of the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Half of respondents said they trust Clinton more to continue implementing the healthcare law, while 41 percent said they trust Trump more. The trust gap was similar between the two presidential candidates when voters were asked which person would better enable healthcare access, handle the high cost of drugs and deal with the opioid epidemic.
Clinton has offered far more specifics than Trump about how she would approach several different healthcare concerns.
Last fall, Clinton released a plan to combat the high cost of prescription drugs, a growing concern in the U.S. She also has put together proposals for reducing opioid abuse and caring for people with Alzheimer’s disease, and this week she released a mental health reform plan.
Trump in contrast has said little about healthcare policy during the election, mostly advocating for repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. His website lists six policy proposals to replace the healthcare law.
On all nine healthcare topics Kaiser polled, a majority of Republican voters said they trusted Trump more and a majority of Democratic voters trusted Clinton. But the results were mixed among independent voters.
A majority of independent voters said they would trust Trump more on the healthcare law and drug costs, but Clinton won out among independents on access to reproductive health services, Medicaid, Medicare, the Zika virus and HIV/AIDS.
Independent voters were about evenly split on Trump versus Clinton when asked who they trusted more on access to healthcare and the opioid epidemic.
The poll was conducted Aug. 18-24 among 1,211 adults nationwide, with an error margin of plus or minus 3 percent.
