Yesterday’s Washington Post (12/16/09) reports that the public isn’t sold on healthcare reform. As the headline puts it:
Public Cooling to Healthcare Reform as Debate Drags On, Poll Finds
The story by Dan Balz and Jon Cohen explains that “there is minimal public enthusiasm for the kind of comprehensive changes in healthcare now under consideration.” Now, how “comprehensive” the reforms under consideration are is certainly debatable, but these conclusions seem to be drawn from questions about costs and Barack Obama’s handling of the issue.
But the Post did ask other, more interesting questions–and then buried the results. Deep into the article we learn that “more than six in 10 favor expanding Medicare to people ages 55 to 64 who lack insurance–a proposal included in one Senate compromise effort that appears unlikely to survive final negotiations.” In the next graph, readers are told:
On the issue of whether and how to expand coverage to those who do not have it, 36 percent favor a government plan to compete with private insurers, 30 percent prefer private plans coordinated by the government and 30 percent want the system to remain intact.
As with the so-called Medicare “buy-in,” this finding of strong support for a public option suggests that the public is much more supportive of fundamental health care changes than the Congress or White House. In other words, the public isn’t really “cooling” to health care reform; they want more than the politicians are likely to deliver.
Am I the only one who sees 30% plus 36% as a significant “FOR” vote? This seems to me to have been consistant since the beginning.
And the oversimplified 30% “wanting the system to remain intact”, could they just be the currently well-covered?
Like six figure reporters?
Unfortunately, while the conduct of the Republicans in the Congressional debate has been both cynical and obstructionist, their two main criticisms of the reform legislation–that it’s way too complicated and way too costly–happen to be correct. By trying to alleviate the system’s worst abuses without antagonizing the insurance industry which is responsible for them, the Democrats have left themselves vulnerable to Republican attack, and left single payer (and even public option) advocates in the position of being lumped together with the right.
Mr Shapiro is accurate indeed. The Senate bill, as it stands, actually increases the stranglehold of private insurers over your cost/access to health care. Good luck to us all. Doing nothing is better than the current Senate bill.
I wonder if they are trying to break off pieces of a monolithically very irrate consituency that wants to see this problem fixed, but cannot agree on certain things. That’s why I just think single payer is best, it is simple, and the complex systems always clog up and are susceptible to corruption and bureaucracy. What do we need with all these insurance companies anyway who have shown for decades nothing but bad faith.
Ditto to Peter Shapiro’s comment. “Reform” amounts to a gift to the insurance companies, while doing little for citizens, who will be paying for the “reforms”. And it definitely does not tackle health care costs.