The public ranks action on health care highly as part of efforts to stem the impact of the economic recession and also views reforming health care as one of the top priorities for President-elect Obama and Congress, according to a new national survey conducted by researchers from the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health.

Americans rank helping the newly unemployed afford health insurance coverage second (picked by 33% as a top priority) behind helping businesses keep or create jobs (45%). Providing states with more federal help to pay for health care of lower income residents ranks third (picked by 31%). These proposed health provisions of the stimulus package ranked ahead of repairing the country’s infrastructure, cutting taxes for the middle class, helping people pay their mortgages (each picked by 27%), and helping large businesses hurt by the recession (13%).

The survey results are available online at http://www.kff.org/kaiserpolls/posr011509pkg.cfm