Americans need to know more before they can
make up their minds about proposed overhauls to the nation’s health care
system, according to a survey released Thursday.
When asked if they wanted to wipe out private
health insurance for a so-called Medicare for All public insurance program, 40
percent of U.S. adults between the ages of 19 to 64 said they did not know
enough to offer an opinion.
A few Democratic presidential candidates have
put forward their proposed health care plans, including Medicare for
All. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. have
advocated for Medicare for All models that replace private insurance with a
national health insurance plan. And Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., released a
health care proposal that covered 330 million Americans under one government
health care plan. According to the candidates, these plans would make health
care affordable for more Americans. It could help reduce the number of
uninsured Americans, which currently amounted to 27.5 million people nationwide in 2018, according to the
Census Bureau, marking a rise of 1.9 million people over the previous year.
According to a July 22 poll from the PBS NewsHour, NPR and Marist, 70
percent of U.S. adults said they supported Medicare for All proposals as long
as they maintain an option to keep private health insurance. A system like this
has been proposed by Pete Buttigieg. By comparison, when asked in a separate
question, only 41 percent of survey respondents said they wanted to scrap
private health insurance for a government-run plan.
In this latest poll from the Commonwealth
Fund, another 32 percent of Americans said they opposed the idea, while 27
percent of Americans favored such a plan, according to the survey results
published by the Commonwealth Fund, which researches health policy. The survey
polled 4,914 U.S. adults ages 19 to 64 from March 19 to June 9.
“People are confused about what this might
mean for them, and what it might mean for the health system and what it might
mean in terms of trade-offs,” said Sara Collins, vice president of Health Care
Coverage and Access at the Commonwealth Fund, during a call with reporters
Wednesday.
Americans are largely satisfied with their
health insurance, but lacked confidence that their health care coverage could
protect them financially if they fell seriously ill and required medical care.
“These
satisfaction rates reflect the fact that most people don’t use their insurance
a ton.”
“These satisfaction rates reflect the fact
that most people don’t use their insurance a ton,” said Sabrina Corlette, a
research professor and co-founder of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at
Georgetown University. “It’s sporadic interactions.”
Eighty-five percent of working-age Americans
said they were satisfied with their health insurance. That included private
health insurance, Medicaid, and coverage purchased on the individual
marketplace established under the Affordable Care Act. Another 14 percent said
they were dissatisfied with their current health insurance.
In contrast, 61 percent of U.S. adults age 16
to 64 said they were confident that they would be able to afford the cost of
care if they became seriously ill, while 38 percent of Americans said they were
not confident.
These survey results come as Democratic presidential
candidates promote their health care plans going into the 2020 election.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration have promised
to replace the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, with “something
better,” although it is unclear what that would be. To date, they have
eliminated some policies put into place under Obamacare, including dismantling the individual mandate.
Health care will be one of the most important issues among voters going into the next
presidential election. Health care costs for Americans are the highest among
industrialized nations. Meanwhile, life expectancy has dropped nationwide in recent years, in
part due to the rise in drug overdose deaths, many of which are tied to the
opioid crisis. Among developed nations the OECD ranked for infant mortality, the U.S. was among the bottom 11, after
Russia.
This survey suggests that all the campaigns
have their work cut out for them if they want to ramp up public awareness of
proposals on the table to fix health care, Corlette said. She said the public
needs more education and discussion about possible solutions aimed at problems
in the U.S. health care system.
“It strikes me as a really good opportunity
for people on both sides of the debate,” Corlette said. “There’s clearly a lot
of people who have just not made up their mind.”
“It’s
important to remember that people need most of all economic growth, job
security and reasons to be optimistic about managing their lives.”
But she said the lack of confidence in how
much protection health coverage affords people tugs at the reality that “the
system doesn’t work really well for people who are very sick.”
New analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation supports that notion. Annual
family premiums for employer-based health insurance rose 5 percent to $20,576
on average, faster than wage growth, which increased by 3.4 percent, according
to the study, published in Health Affairs. And since 2009, those premiums
jumped 54 percent.
Health insurance costs and coverage only
provide part of the picture of what troubles Americans, said Thomas Miller, a
resident fellow with the conservative American Enterprise Institute.
Policymakers need to think about more than
tinkering with “incremental expansions of coverage on the margins beyond where
we already are,” Miller said. “It’s important to remember that people need most
of all economic growth, job security and reasons to be optimistic about
managing their lives.”
Left: When asked if they wanted to wipe out private
health insurance for a so-called Medicare for All public insurance program, 40
percent of U.S. adults between the ages of 19 to 64 said they did not know
enough to offer an opinion.
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