Majority of Americans satisfied with their healthcare plans.
Gallup's annual Healthcare survey, conducted Nov. 11-14, finds 57% of Americans saying they are satisfied with the total cost they pay for their healthcare, while 39% are dissatisfied. These percentages have been quite stable in recent years, after a slight dip in reported satisfaction between 2001 (64%) and 2002 (58%).
That stability is somewhat at odds with other recent trends in the poll. For example, of the roughly 6 in 10 Americans who have private health insurance plans, a shrinking number report that that their employers pay their full premiums. In 2001, 24% said their employers paid the full premium; now, just 15% do. During that time, there has been an increase in the percentage saying the premiums are shared between themselves and their employers.
Implications: Americans may express a desire for changing the U.S. healthcare system but a perhaps surprisingly large number are content with the health insurance and health coverage they currently have.
(Emphasis added)
My question to those who are pushing universal single payer health care has always been: how do you convince the majority of Americans who are relatively happy with their current health insurance to support such a drastic change?
There's more here.
(Hat tip: Stephen Bainbridge)
Because so many don't have health insurance.
Hm. 40% have no healthcare through their employer. And many of those have no healthcare at all. Of the 60% who do, nearly 40% are not happy with it. So about 36% of Americans are satisfied with their healthcare situation. Contrast that with single payer or universal systems in all other industrialized democracies. Systems which cost far less, deliver superior service, and produce better results (longer healthier lives for their citizens) and have broad and enthusiastic public support. AND do not represent a long term drag on their respective economies.
And polls show again and again that the majority of Americans are in favor of a Medicare like system for all Americans.
Yes, in the current media environment it can be difficult to convince the relatively wealthy and healthy minority to support a change. But people seldom give up their privileged status willingly.
The real headlines you don't see are the ones that show how poorly our current approach to healthcare is performing and why.
The answer to your question is give them a bad experience with their current plan. Alternatively, have them lose their coverage. The reason most people are "relatively happy with their current health insurance" is because most people are relatively healthy. Most people are happy with the justice system too, until they experience its apparent lack of concern for justice. That's because most people obey the law.
Paying more and getting less are bad trends for healthcare. Do nothing and eventually even the well covered will lose the willingness to pay for it.
It all depends on the wording of the poll. Yes, I have health care coverage which is okay, although it costs way too much (most people have no idea how much it costs because the premiums are paid through payroll deduction.) So, depending on how the question was asked, I might have checked that I was satisfied. But I'm not satisfied with the fact that my adult children, who are working and self supporting have absolutely no health care coverage and cannot afford to buy coverage. So, if you ask me if overall I am satisfied with our system of health care coverage I would check "no." And I am very unsatisfied with the fact that we pay a higher percentage of our GNP for health care than any other nation and aren't even in the top 10 in terms of results.
The problem isn't that people hate their healthcare, as the posting showed, or that everyone doesn't have healthcare, but that a large minority of the people don't have healthcare. Why are solutions being proposed to fix a problem that we don't have - covering people that already have insurance - instead of just covering those that don't have it? I'm not wild about my own healthcare, but it will do just fine for now - I don't really want the govt to remake healthcare for me, I want them to provide it for those that don't have insurance.
Honestly? Because the moment a program is marked as "for the needy" it is instantly starved (they only need the bare minimum, and we're only having this program grudgingly anyway) and it's assumed that the interface should be demoralizing for the users (we need to make them not want to suck at the public teat, etc etc ad infinitum) as well as extremely bureaucratic (because we need to spend lots of energy on the futile fight to root out the last possible fraudulent customer).
Whereas, when a service is something that the entire public from all classes is expected to use, all of a sudden it's about having nice amenities and preserving public dignity, because the people who are funding it expect to be using it themselves, so they think as users.
Compare Medicare vs. Medicaid, or just take a look at systems elsewhere in the world - not restricted to healthcare either, it's a phenomenon of any funding, contrasting "funding for all of us" vs. "funding for those losers."
National single-payer healthcare is basically like belonging to an HMO, except that all doctors are on the plan and you only have to do the paperwork once. Plus, you're free to switch jobs whenever you want to with no fear of losing insurance, so you can take more risks. You can go to whatever doctors you want in the phone book or that you just see a sign for walking down the street.
I would think the enhanced job-hopping ability would be attractive in today's climate though, particularly given competition with companies elsewhere that don't have the burden of messing around with employee healthcare, too.
"Whereas, when a service is something that the entire public from all classes is expected to use, all of a sudden it's about having nice amenities and preserving public dignity, because the people who are funding it expect to be using it themselves, so they think as users."
Like the IRS. Or Social Security Administration. Or the Secretary of State's office.
Which universal government-provided services do you consider to be exemplary in terms of efficiency and service? I can't think of any.
'I would think the enhanced job-hopping ability would be attractive in today's climate though, particularly given competition with companies elsewhere that don't have the burden of messing around with employee healthcare, too."
I support this too, but by making health insurance portable with the insured, by removing many coverage mandates to increase choices, and by allowing competition among insurance companies across state lines.
As one who deals with employee health coverage, I know the extent to which employees are somewhat uninformed about the real cost of their coverage goes far beyond what is deducted from their paychecks. Let's say you're 30ish and you pay $200/mo for decent family coverage -- low deductible, low Rx and MD visit co-pays, maybe even some dental and eye coverage. If the plan covers you and your spouse and 1 or 2 kids, the cost of that plan almost certainly exceeds $500 a month.
It would be interesting to see a study that compares premiums paid vs. services used in such a scenario. In other words, barring a major illness, accident, or disease, does an average family use $6000 worth of healthcare services in an average year? Also, keep in mind that a major illness, accident, or disease would probably engage an 80/20-type rule and cause the family to incur additional costs anyway.
Which universal government-provided services do you consider to be exemplary in terms of efficiency and service? I can't think of any.
Well, now that the fake conservatives run everything, everything sucks.
But before that:
1. Roads
2. National Parks
3. Unemployment
4. Fire Department
5. Sanitation
6. Emergency Relief
3, 5, and 6 aren't universal.
National Parks is a great example of excellent service, although I'm not sure why you think they suck now. It's anecdotal, but I visit at least one per year, and they're still excellent. The construction at the east entrance of Yellowstone is aggravating, but understandable. :-)
Fire departments - YMMV, due to the extreme locality of the service provided.
Roads - another good example, although again I'm not sure why you think they suck now, other than Illinois problems with deferred maintenance, which is hardly due to "fake conservatives running everything."
To be clear,
Single payer only describes the insurance policy which is social insurance or socialized insurance with one payer - the governement. The delivery system would still be private and you could go to any hospital or doctor you want. Medicare is an example of single payer, except with 1/10th of the overhead costs that private insurance. Now the VA system is an example of socialized medicine where the government owns the hospitals and the doctors are employed by the government.
I think the hard question for America is: Which do we value more, our pocketbooks or universal coverage where everyone can recieve healthcare. The United States spends 16% of its GDP - the highest of any industrialized country - on health care with crappy coverage for most, and no coverage for a lot of people. It's one of the most inefficient heathcare system I can think of.
Outside the United States, there is this ethos that healthcare is a human right; its about dignity. I think Americans feel the same way, its just that we're not willing to pay for it.
Heath care is not a right. It's a service, performed by people trained at considerable expense to a particular level of expertise.
Rights come from God - the right to free speech, to worship, to assemble, to petition, to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. None of our rights are services for which we compensate others. None of them.
Health care is not a right. It is not listed in our Constitution or even in the UN declaration of Human Rights.
You may want health care to be an entitlement, but it is not a right.
IP says: Health care is not a right. It is not listed in our Constitution or even in the UN declaration of Human Rights.
In UN declaration of Humans Rights it calls for adequate medical care.
From the UN Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 25.
(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
In my interpretation, that calls for equitable healthcare.
You're inferring.
The UN DOHR doesn't say health care is a right. It says a "standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family..." is a right.
It's making my point for me, which is that health care is a service for which we pay - hence why an adequate standard of living is necessary - to pay for the service.
Health care is not a right. It's a service. Do we have any other rights which are also services? Of course not. Free speech is a right. Due process is a right. Health care is a service.
Again, you may want health care to be an entitlement, but that's different than it being a right.
IP asks: "Which universal government-provided services do you consider to be exemplary in terms of efficiency and service? I can't think of any."
Compare Medicare with Medicaid. No doubt you'll complain about both, but I'd wager that the image held of Medicare among the public, and the satisfaction with the service, is higher because it's a service for "our old people" rather than "lazy losers who are always sucking off the public teat." I merely point out that among the public services which are routinely flamed, there is variation, EVEN if you consider them both to suck.
Plus as Xian says above, how about roads, police, fire department?
I've lived with single payer health care, and had no problem with it. It's a lot easier to deal with than the US piecemeal paperwork-from-hell system. Private paperwork and private bureaucracy is just that - bureaucracy, only you get the fun of repeating it each time you switch jobs. It's silly. But, it's ideologically correct and it makes some people quite wealthy, so expect it to continue for a while.
I could go to any doctor I wanted to, no referral shenanigans, no checking with my insurance to see if the doctor I want is on the plan. Like I said, it's like one giant HMO with one set of paperwork - you can choose your own services. It's not like the VA (or military health care). Is it perfect? No system is perfect. But it's not the scary boogeyman it's often portrayed as in the US mass media.
If the US is one big HMO, how do we know how much to pay for services? From where does the market price come?
"Rights come from God - the right to free speech, to worship, to assemble, to petition, to pursue life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. None of our rights are services for which we compensate others. None of them."
These things come from GOD???
How do you decide how much to pay the military?
Good question. Answer: set by the government to attract enough people at the minimum required standards. I think the military is also famous for the $600 hammer and $1200 toilet seat too.
It just seems to me that the medical world is way too complicated and fast moving for the gov't to do even a decent job at setting reimbursement rates in a vaccum.
IP, I hope you're not lawyer. You make some really weak arguments considering the text from UN DOHR Article 25 is right in front of you and it plainly says necessary medical care is a right. You are half right, however. In this country, there is no right to healthcare like there is in every other civilized and industrialized nation in the world.
someone wrote this very early in the thread:
Better services, better results, and lower costs - who would not support such a plan? The insurance companies I guess. Do they have the power to convince all of America that this dream system of single payer is actually inferior to what we have now?
Color me skeptical.
But then why for the love of all that is good, are you all willing to argue against this cheaper, more comprehensive system over and over?
This is not a hypothetical--there are a whole mess of countries that have cheaper systems which keep their populace more healthy.
And IP, you are seriously skimping on the "pursuit of happiness" with a lot of your rights stances. Unless "pursuit" is the only word you are interested in. As in, "You can pursue happiness, but because we suck at facilitating that right, you aren't going to get it!"
"Which universal government-provided services do you consider to be exemplary in terms of efficiency and service? I can't think of any." Intercostal waterways, Coast Guard, Federal Highways, National Polution Discharge Elimination System, Forest Service, Fish & Wildlife Service, Park Service, National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, the list goes on.
We have a constitution, not a theocracy. Rights don't come from God, they come from the will of the governed. Their certainly are theories that say that universal human rights have a moral basis. And I believe they do. But I'm unwilling to leave that up to the personal diety of whoever happens to be in charge right now.
I'm also continually amazed by the abiltiy of general American conservative thought to simply ignore facts or deny good outcomes which don't involve the magic market fairy. Markets are a tool. Not a natural law. Not the divine will of Ayn Rand made manifest on earth. And just because a corporation or two are making boatloads of money does it automatically mean that the outcome is the most 'efficient' or that we wouldnt' be a doing a lot better with another approach. Especially when those other approaches can be easily pointed out working well elsewhere.
When it comes to healthcare why isn't the American right out there singing the praises of Medicare? Its a wonderful program being run at a fraction of the cost and multiples of the effectiveness of private insurers. Ah, no magic market fairy. So its better to have a horrendously wasteful mish mash that does only one thing well (make a few people very wealthy) than an effective national program that achieves what we really need as a society, deliver health care to people so they can live better more productive lives. Its better to have all Americans suffer under a failed ideological approach than have the tender sensibilities of the conservative classes harmed when they are proved, yet again, disasterously wrong.
"We have a constitution, not a theocracy. Rights don't come from God, they come from the will of the governed."
Inalienable rights, whether one believes they are endowed by God, a Creator, nature, etc... exist without any Constitution, without any law, nor are they dependent upon such instruments. A government, Constitutional or otherwise can merely protect such rights from infringement or deny and/or disparage them. That was the fear of having a Bill of Rights in the Constitution in the first place and the main intent behind Amendment IX that a list of Rights was not meant to give the government the power to deny or disparage any other rights.
Jefferson, who was hardly a theocrat by any stretch of the imagination, embodied this notion of inalienable rights in our Declaration of Independence and the notion that rights exist whether a government recognizes them has been embodied in our Constitution and the judicial interpretations of it. A good Supreme Course to read on this would be Barron v. Baltimore (unless I'm getting my case names mixed up) on why the Bill of Rights didn't apply to the States. They cover this topic in depth.
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Glock21 Op/Ed
Barron is an unsturdy prop in many ways since 1) it applied narrowly to the 5th amendment (taking) though the justices in their opinion reached a larger conclusion not required by the case at hand. The modern courts (modern being Civil War and onward) have used due process and the 14th amendment to make Barron moot, if not directly overrule it. And its especially problematic given the current vogue on the right to attack 'invented' rights not contained in the plain language of the original text.
Jefferson certainly believed that rights existed outside of government but, again, the idea that his particular creator saw certain rights and not others is not something that underpins the Constitution. Nor is it something which should bind us today. The preamble to the Constitution is quite short:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In other words, in order to accomplish some common social goods we are ceding certain powers to a limited government.
And the specific amendment to which you refer, Article XI, states in full
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people. (Emphasis mine.)
The source of those rights are the people.
I too believe that certain human rights exist beyond governments. But they arise from our collective humanity.
What's wrong with the Social Security Administration? You could set your clock by the delivery of those checks. And the IRS? They might be greedy monsters, but that is also one damned fine bureaucracy. They process hundreds of millions of returns in a year, and the wait for the check is usually less than two months. Impressive.
As for the concept of the moral justiification for universal health care under our Constitution. I will humbly quote myself:
Well, now that the fake conservatives run everything, everything sucks.
They're not fake conservatives. They are conservative politicians, to be exact.
Boon, we can debate this forever. My point is that in the same way that "feminism" is an ideal, so if idiots call themselves "feminists" that doesn't mean feminism is stupid, the same is true with conservatism.
So I don't think it's fair to criticize someone like Gordy, who in most cases actually embodies conservative ideals because the term "conservative" now means to be racist, classist and use billions of dollars of American's money to wipe your own ass.
I think we should criticize the hell of him for continuing to support people who do all of these things--no matter how much he bellyaches about it.