The Badger Poll of Wisconsin residents released Thursday found that 18 percent rank health care as their most important issue, up from 12 percent in a June poll.

Taxes remained residents' primary issue, ranked first by 23 percent of respondents in November and June.

Precisely half of the poll respondents said the state's health care system has major problems. Twelve percent said it's in crisis, 35 percent said it has minor problems and 2 percent said it has no problems. Another 2 percent are undecided.

When it comes to solutions, 82 percent of respondents favor expanding existing government programs to help low-income people and 72 percent favor requiring all residents to buy health insurance. Sixty-one percent favor encouraging people to put money in tax-free health savings accounts. And 51 percent favored replacing the current system with one administered by the state - essentially the Healthy Wisconsin proposal which was dropped from the state budget during recent legislative negotiations.

Results for southeastern Wisconsin without Milwaukee County are slightly different. Expanding existing programs was favored by 75 percent of respondents, requiring insurance by 63 percent, encouraging HSAs by 67 percent and a state-administered system by 53 percent.

The poll was done by the University of Wisconsin Survey Center and was based on interviews with 507 people whose land line telephones were chosen at random and who were interviewed between Nov. 27 and Dec. 5. The sample error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.