Is this poll done with an explanation of how it will be funded or is it just the general idea of a medicare for all policy? I'm not American and not professing to understand Republicans but I have a suspicion a lot of the Republican support (and Democrat too) would be very dependent on how much taxes change proportionately in order to cover the total cost to the country.
That's a good question.
Not sure about that particular poll (which I think was Reuters), but in general, the consensus is that taxes would increase, but reduced spending on private insurance would more than compensate (when I lived there I had "good" private coverage through work and still had to pay $600 out of pocket each month, plus a $400 fee for a routine and no doubt unecessary procedure the one time we actually needed to use it. Six months' private coverage for Mme. Abelard when we moved to Canada cost less than one month in the US,
with the employer coverage).
Americans spend absolutely preposterous amounts on health care, double most other countries. There is plently of scope for efficiency. The Koch brothers recently funded a study aimed at discrediting the Bernie plan, only for it to
accidently project $2 trillion in net savings.
It's remarkable how much the country delivers what you'd expect from the profit motive (ie: charging as much as possible while keeping patients, or rather, consumers, as unhealthy as possible).
Something less fequently mentioned but equally worth considering is the certain boost to productivity - for example, workers in the US remain at dead-end jobs, allowing employers to depress wages, because nobody with medical concerns or a family dares take the risk of ever losing coverage. And the burden of paying the most expensive rates in the world to insure employees is an huge drain on entrepreneurship and small business. Even the CEO of GM once admitted a decade or so ago that if it weren't for political blowback, they would relocate every plant to Canada for this reason.
There's some debate about without you could sell that tax height before the overall savings kicked in... but I think if 2016 teaches us nothing else, it's that we shouldn't be so certain that longstanding and often lazy assumptions about the US public still hold
