For young adults, health care not political priority

"Young voters helped put Barack Obama in the White House, but they're not proving to be much help when it comes to the biggest push of his presidency," Politico reports. Voters aged 18 to 29 say "they're likely to support health care reform by wider margins than those in any other age range," but polling numbers and other evidence indicate "health care reform just isn't a particularly high priority for the younger crowd."

"[I]n a new Gallup Poll out this week, only 34 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 said they want their member of Congress to vote for health care reform. Another 34 percent want their representative to oppose health care reform, and a whopping 31 percent say they aren't sure — roughly 10 percentage points higher than other age groups. Obama's plan could have immediate appeal for young adults, if its proponents could get them to pay attention. Among other things, the plan would create special young-adult private and public insurance plans and would allow them to remain on their parents' policies until they're 26" (Lovely, 9/10).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.