Many voters, including Democrats, support single-payer healthinsurance, but not as the sole option. (Image:Shutterstock)

COVID-19 has emboldened Democratic candidates and lawmakers topush for progressive health care policies, but even a pandemicmight not convince voters to support universal health care.

To be sure, Democratic members of Congress, like MassachusettsSenator Elizabeth Warren, have pushed for increased health carefunding, such as providing paid sick leave and free personalprotective equipment to essential workers. Even presidentialcandidate Joe Biden, with a far less progressive take on healthcare than his Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, cited thecoronavirus in calling on President Donald Trump to drop thefederal government's support of a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of theAffordable Care Act. More than 30 million Americans are unemployeddue to COVID-19, many having lost the health insurance theiremployers provided them.

Related: You're the reason so many Americans wantsingle-payer

Several studies, however, reveal that Americans remain unlikelyto vote for universal or government-funded health care.

"Americans are seeing what's happening with coronavirus, andthat can influence how they're thinking about specific policies,but the weight of prior experience is that doesn't necessarilymean, by and large, that it's really going to change," said DanielHopkins, a political science professor at the University ofPennsylvania. "That said, it is possible political activists andparties may want to use this as an opportunity."

In a poll conducted March 25 through March 30, the Kaiser FamilyFoundation found that 69% of Americans favored agovernment-administered health plan but only if it is a public option that would compete with privatehealth insurance. That response hasn't changed because of thecoronavirus.

Yet progressive Democratic lawmakers have pushed "Medicare forAll," which would make single-payer health insurance the onlyoption for Americans. Democratic presidential candidate BernieSanders, a U.S. Senator from Vermont, made the issue part of hiscampaign – but lost significant state primaries to Biden.

"The short story, from a political science standpoint, is healthcare is very, very hard to revolutionize," Hopkins said.

Even President Barack Obama ushered in the Affordable Care Act,one of the biggest legislative changes in American health care, byretaining employer insurance plans as options, he said.

The key takeaway, supported in Kaiser's polling research, isthat many voters, including Democrats, support single-payer healthinsurance, Hopkins said, but not as the sole option.

"In general, the public voices some level of support forgovernment provided health insurance," he said. "They assume it'san option for government provided health care, rather than amandate or requirement that you have public provided healthinsurance. Kaiser research has shown if you explain 'Medicare ForAll' means you'd have to give up employer-provided insurance,support plummets. You saw this in the Democratic primaryprocess."

That was the finding at a Feb. 21 conference, hosted by the University ofPennsylvania's Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, atwhich Hopkins was a panelist.

But that was before COVID-19 spread throughout the UnitedStates. By March, most states were under lockdown orders, and, byearly April, the U.S. reported 400,000 cases of coronavirus.Hopkins said he later did his own online polling of 1,912 residentsof Pennsylvania, both Democrats and Republicans, between March 14and March 18, and between April 4 and April 8.

"Between those dates, we did not see much of a shift in howpeople think about single-payer health insurance," Hopkins said."Overall, a slight majority opposed, but I did not see much of ashift."

His March survey found that 26% strongly favored "Medicare forAll," and 17% somewhat favored it. It also found that 42% stronglyopposed, and 8% somewhat opposed.

Those percentages varied little one month later. The April pollsurvey found 31% strongly favored, and 15% somewhat favored, but42% still strongly opposed, and 7% somewhat opposed.

Hopkins said he did not expect the percentages to change thatmuch, even as coronavirus cases keep rising. Americans could bemore likely to shift views on increased spending, particularly tohospitals and doctors and nurses who are "politically popular," butgeneral attempts at health care reform are a gamble.

"There's a real jump from saying the government needs to bepractical in protecting Americans from coronavirus and needs tomake critical investments in the health care system, which largenumbers of Americans support, to saying we need to have asingle-payer, government-provided health insurance with no employerprovided insurance," he said. "Yes, it's reasonable for people whoare politically engaged to think this crisis may lead us to rethinkhow the health care system works, but, by and large, people findevidence of the views they already have."

Read more: 

• Biden's latest health care proposal: Medicare formore
• Democrats debate whether 'Medicare for All' isrealistic
• 3 takeaways from the CBO's report on single-payerhealth care