Residents of California believe that making health care more affordable should be the second-highest priority this year for the new governor, Gavin Newsom, and state political leaders — just behind improving public education — according to a new survey. Eighty percent of Californians said affordable health care was “extremely” or “very” important, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation/California Health Care Foundation poll, released Thursday. (Kaiser Health News, which produces California Healthline, is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation. California Healthline is an editorially independent publication of the California Health Care Foundation.)

Those surveyed said availability of mental health care was the most important among a range of health care priorities. They also put high importance on ensuring that all Californians have access to health insurance and on reducing the cost of care — and prescription drugs. The poll, which included 1,404 adults, was conducted by telephone Nov. 12-Dec. 27, 2018. The margin of sampling error is +/-3 percentage points for the full sample.