Public Doubts Obama Can Deliver on All Health Care Promises

There's a deepening vein of skepticism about President Obama's ability to deliver on his health care promises, and much of it is rooted in the belief that he cannot make good on expanding coverage to all Americans without raising taxes on the middle class or affecting the quality of care, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll.

The survey, conducted after Obama's health care speech to Congress last week, found Americans would oppose by 73 percent to 26 percent a health care overhaul that provided universal coverage if it resulted in higher taxes on the middle class. And overall, 60 percent do not believe Obama can pull off the hat trick of coverage for all, maintaining the quality of health care and doing so without raising taxes. Seventy-eight percent of those surveyed said they would also oppose any plan that required middle-class Americans to pay more for their health care than they do now.

Obama has pledged to pay for most of the cost of the health care overhaul by seeking savings in Medicare and other existing programs, but 56 percent are not too confident or not confident at all that this will work. Forty-three percent expressed at least some confidence that it would.

There is a big bloc of Americans who believe health care reform will either make things worse or not result in any change.

Forty percent of Americans believe passage of health care reform will make coverage better, while 20 percent say there would be no change and 37 percent believe it would get worse. Forty percent say the plan would increase overall costs of health care, while 23 percent believe there would be no change and 34 percent say the cost situation would improve.

The telephone survey of 1,030 adults was conducted Sept. 11-13. The poll has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.