Two New Polls on Health Care Reform

A Quinnipiac poll continues to show considerable public support for a public option to attempt to keep the insurance companies honest:

Sixty-nine percent of Americans support creation of a government-run health plan to compete with private insurance companies, a new poll found. In addition, 52 percent of those surveyed by Hamden, Connecticut-based Quinnipiac University said such a plan would keep the private insurance companies honest. Thirty-two percent disagreed. Twenty-six percent said they opposed a government-run insurance program.

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey shows that there is room for Republicans to increase opposition by using fears of increased costs:

Fifty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say they favor the president’s health care plan, with 45 percent opposed. Obama aims to bring down health care costs and provide medical insurance to many of the more than 45 million Americans currently without coverage. His proposals, which are making their way through five different congressional committees in the Senate and the House, also call for a government-run health insurance program to compete with private insurers.

“Women and younger Americans are slightly more likely to support Obama’s approach to health care,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “Those are usually the groups that are more concerned about health care and health insurance.”

The poll suggests that 55 percent think the U.S. health care system is in need of a great deal of reform, with four in ten saying only some reform is needed. Nearly half of those questioned have more trust in the President rather than Republicans in Congress to handle health care form, with 38 percent backing the congressional Republicans over Obama.

A government run health insurance program is one of the most controversial parts of the Obama health reform proposals, with Republicans suggesting that such a plan could force current health care providers out of business, forcing Americans to switch doctors. The poll indicates such arguments may not be working.

“Two-thirds believe that the president’s plan would allow them to see the same doctors they currently receive care from, and most say that their health insurance provider would not go out of business if Obama’s plan is passed,” says Holland.

But the poll does provide some ammunition for Republicans opposed to the president’s proposals. Fifty-four percent say their medical insurance costs will increase if the Obama plan becomes law, with 17 percent feeling their costs will decrease. Around one in four say their costs will remain the same. And only one in five say their family will be better off if the president’s plan becomes law, with 35 percent feeling they would be worse off, and 44 percent saying they would be about the same.

There is a considerable amount of misunderstanding about what is being proposed (with this largely being caused by a considerable amount of misinformation being spread by the right wing noise machine). It looks like this is having some effect with many believing insurance reform will increase insurance costs while less are buying the argument that they will be forced to change doctors. Providing more options will greatly decrease the current problem of people being forced to change doctors due to employers changing plans which the employees must join.

7 Comments

  1. 1
    Lloyd Y. Asato says:

    Two New Polls on Health Care Reform – Liberal Values – Defending … http://tinyurl.com/mx7s8d

  2. 2
    Lloyd Y. Asato says:

    Two New Polls on Health Care Reform – Liberal Values – Defending … http://tinyurl.com/mx7s8d

  3. 3
    Medicineworld says:

     America must decide whether we are going to be about the business of healthcare or about the healthcare business.Failure to commit to the former and further attempts to preserve the latter in any way will I think inevitably bring further economic disaster. Given the rampant greed on steroids evidenced by the insurance and Pharmaceutical industries it ought to be blatantly obvious to anyone that a Single Payer system is what is needed.Anyone opposed to it either has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo or they are so paranoid about socialism as to act against their own best interests.I have no faith in the Democratic party and one thing is for damn sure. The Republican party is to the welfare of the American taxpayer what botulism is to a can of tuna.The last eight years are a testament to that point. Stop the rhetoric people are dying! Not to suggest that this has ever been a factor were political considerations are concerned.Americans would sleep through the Sermon on the Mount but we’ll fight like dogs over political parties to whom we are all only votes and children of a lesser God.

  4. 4
    Matt says:

    People are dying??? Stop the rhetoric indeed.

  5. 5
    Ron Chusid says:

    That is hardly rhetoric. I have seen many patients die as a consequence of not having health care coverage, leading to treatable problems not being diagnosed until too late or due to not receiving basic medical care to manage their problems.

  6. 6
    Christoher Skyi says:

    “There is a considerable amount of misunderstanding about what is being proposed (with this largely being caused by a considerable amount of misinformation being spread by the right wing noise machine)”
     
    Yes, one of the reasons I haven’t commented on this most important of issues is — I don’t know what the hell is really going on.  Quantum Physics would be easier to understand.
     
    And that’s a problem.  This suggests that the “fix” or “solution” is complex, labyrinthine, convoluted.  Is the whole new health care system going be some bureaucratic nightmare?
     
    I have car insurance. I have apartment insurance.  It’s easy (relatively) to understand. And the costs are reasonable.  It should not pass without comment that these are largely unregulated “free market” solutions to insuring part of our lives.   The whole current Health care system is about as far from a free-market as the military-industrial complex system that provides national defense.   Both are a complete merger of private and public entities with their own agendas vying for advantage.
     
    This post from ThinkMarket sums up most peoples birds-eye view of the entire health care issue:
     
     
    “Funny thing about the Obama healthcare plan. It resembles a Rube Goldberg machine, as did the 1990s Clinton version. The present proposal “relies on a combination of subsidies and regulation to achieve universal coverage, and introduces a public plan to compete with insurers and hold down costs,” according to Paul Krugman in the NYT.
     
     
    Why not simply extend Medicare to everybody? Oh, I forgot, Medicare Part A is projected to run out of money by 2017. And the only reason the other parts don’t face potential insolvency is that they’re financed from general tax revenue. Given the government’s track record with medical entitlements, the claim that a new  public plan will hold down costs is laughable.
     
     
    Medicare costs more than half a trillion dollars a year now; within a decade it will require almost $1 trillion a year. If you want to skirt the cost issue, it’s best not to mention Medicare. This is the kind thing Charlotte Twight identified as a way proponents of larger government quash opposition. Concoct an elaborate new program of subsidies and regulations, mask the cost, focus on the new entitlement, and you’ll get more people behind the program.
     
     
    Whereas if you suggested expanding Medicare, folks might worry about having to foot a bill that will cost even more trillions than Medicare already does. Obscure the trap and hook the population. No wonder Krugman writes that he’s not worried about costs. And no wonder he airily dismisses the Congressional Budget Office’s preliminary prediction (i.e., According to that assessment, enacting the proposal would result in a net increase in federal budget deficits of about $1.0 trillion over the 2010–2019 period. Once the proposal was fully implemented, about 39 million individuals would obtain coverage through the new insurance exchanges. At the same time, the number of people who had coverage through an employer would decline by about 15 million (or roughly 10 percent), and coverage from other sources would fall by about 8 million, so the net decrease in the number of people uninsured would be about 16 million.)”
     
     


    Here’s the bottom line as I see it:
     
    A monstrous medical-industrial complex has grown around the entitlement programs. It is no more about the free market than the military-industrial complex. Insurers and service providers extract as much value as they can for themselves, as one would expect. Adding yet another layer of bureaucracy merely increases the cost to the hapless taxpayer.
     
     
    “The right wing noise machine?”  I’m wondering how much is really deliberate mis-information and how much is genuine confusion and how much fearful speculation about the real costs and consequences — I think we do have much to fear from such a complex overhaul of health care.
     

  7. 7
    Ron Chusid says:

    Getting back to Matt’s comment, researchers have looked at how many unnecessary deaths there are due to lack of access to health care. Of 19 industrialized countries, the United States came in last:

    In 2000, health care experts for the World Health Organization tried to do a statistical ranking of the world’s health care systems. They studied 191 countries and ranked them on things like the number of years people lived in good health and whether everyone had access to good health care. France came in first. The United States ranked 37th.

    Some researchers, however, said that study was flawed, arguing that there might be things other than a country’s health care system that determined factors like longevity. So this year, two researchers at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine measured something called the “amenable mortality.” Basically, it’s a measure of deaths that could have been prevented with good health care. The researchers looked at health care in 19 industrialized nations. Again, France came in first. The United States was last.

    That is just one of many reasons I wouldn’t pay any attention to the empty right wing talking points in Christopher’s comment. If every other industrialized country in the world can do it, the United States can. The right wing talking points about Medicare are also not worth paying attention to considering that Medicare provides health care more economically than our private insurance plans.

    Whether it is deliberate mis-information (as is very frequently the case) or genuine confusion over the facts, the one thing that is clear is that the talking points from the right wing have no relevance to the real world.

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