Poll: More Than Half of Americans Say Healthcare Coverage is 'Not a Government Responsibility'

One endless point of contention between progressives and conservatives is over the proper role of government.

Conservatives, for their part, have always believed that a smaller, less centralized, less intrusive government works best and most efficiently. And this, of course, applies to the issue of healthcare.

And yet this hands-off, non-government approach to ensuring coverage is a position more Americans have come to embrace over the past decade. Just look at how much public opinion has shifted on the following question since 2006:

In other words:

Prior to the feverish days of ‘Hope and Change,’ respondents were very open to the idea of the federal government taking the lead on healthcare and thus supplying coverage to every American. It seems that the public’s experience with Obamacare, however, has utterly changed their minds.

Conservative commentator Charles Krauthammer once observed that as a direct result of the Obama presidency, and his transformative experiment in health care reform, the case for liberalism “will be set back a full generation.”

If this poll is any indication, it seems he was correct.