Executive Summary

Health care reform begins to make its way through Congress at a time when 72 percent of the country thinks we’re becoming less healthy and 60 percent believes that the American health care system needs a complete overhaul or major reform. A new report commissioned by the Trust for America’s Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provides compelling evidence that Americans are ready to move from a “sick care “ system that treats people after they get sick to a true “health care” system that works to keep people healthy in the first place.

Key Findings

From coast to coast and across the political spectrum, the American public is sending a signal that prevention has a significant role to play in public policy surrounding health issues. More than three-quarters of American voters support increasing funding for prevention, and prevention ranks as the top priority for health care reform, trumping all other proposals tested in this survey.

The study also shows that while people believe prevention will save us money, its impact on keeping people healthy trumps reducing health care costs. While a wide majority (77 percent) believes that prevention will in fact save us money, more than 7 in 10 support an investment in prevention regardless of whether it will save money or not, pointing to disease reduction and keeping people healthy as the top reason to invest in prevention.