Most Americans Want Guaranteed Health Insurance

Technorati Tags: national health care, health insurance coverage, single payer

It seems almost every day now we find another example of how profoundly out of synch government is with the American people. Here's another one: Most Americans think that everyone in this country should have access to affordable health care, and they believe that government should provide it. And they are willing to pay for it:

A majority of Americans say the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every American, especially children, and are willing to pay higher taxes to do it, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll.

While the war in Iraq remains the overarching issue in the early stages of the 2008 campaign, access to affordable health care is at the top of the public’s domestic agenda, ranked as far more important than immigration, cutting taxes or promoting traditional values. Only 24 percent said they were satisfied with President Bush’s handling of the issue, despite his recent initiatives, and 62 percent said the Democrats — not the Republicans — were more likely to improve the health care system.

Americans showed a striking willingness in the poll to make tradeoffs for a better health care system, including paying as much as $500 more in taxes a year and forgoing future tax cuts. ...

The article goes on to say that Americans still disagree on whether participation in a national health care plan should be mandatory, and on whether comprehensive coverage should come from private insurance companies or from the federal government, but they agree that the present system, in which millions of people have no health insurance at all, is unacceptable:

While Democrats are traditionally strong supporters of expanding health coverage, this survey found many Republicans and independents in agreement.

“I think everybody should have some kind of health care available to them,” said Diane Manning, 66, of Vancouver, Wash., who described herself as an independent.

“I don’t necessarily think that socialized medicine is the answer, but I think everyone should have that right,” said Ms. Manning, who participated in the poll and agreed to a follow-up interview “And there are so many people that don’t.”

The poll also found overwhelming support behind the Childrens’ Health Insurance Program, which covers many low and moderate income children and is up for renewal in Congress this year. Eighty-four percent of those polled said they supported expanding the current program to cover all uninsured children, now estimated at more than eight million. A similar majority said they thought the lack of health insurance for many children was a “very serious” problem for the country.
[...]
The poll found Americans across party lines willing to make some sacrifice to insure that every American has access to health insurance. Sixty percent, including 62 percent of independents and 46 percent of Republicans, said they would be willing to pay more in taxes. Half said they would be willing to pay as much as $500 a year more.

Nearly 8 in 10 said they thought it was more important to provide universal access to health insurance than to extend the tax cuts of recent years; 18 percent said the tax cuts were more important.

There's another interesting angle to this story: the correlation between the growing number of Americans who either have gone without medical treatment or know someone who has because they lacked insurance coverage; and the increase in support for national health care [bolds are mine]:

Most Americans in the poll said they were satisfied with the quality of their health care, but there was widespread concern about costs. Nearly half of those with insurance said their employer had cut back on benefits or required them to pay more for their benefits in recent years. A quarter of those with insurance said someone in their household had gone without a medical test or treatment because insurance would not cover it. Six in 10 of those without insurance said someone in their household had gone without care because of the cost.

That level of concern helps explain the striking support for substantial change: Nearly two-thirds said the federal government should guarantee health insurance for all Americans. They were then asked, “What if that meant that the cost of your own health insurance would go up?” Forty-eight percent said they would still support it.

This accords with my experience completely. Health care coverage in this country is inconsistent, arbitrary, haphazard, completely unreliable. When I was freelancing, I could not afford to buy my own health insurance. When I started working at Barnes & Noble, I had health insurance -- but I had to work there for an entire year to get it. During that year, I had no health insurance, and no way to pay for it, either, on the pathetic money I made at B&N. When I was accepted into the NYC Teaching Fellows Program, I was fully covered for health benefits under New York City's plan for city workers. But when the Teaching Fellows kicked me out of the program because they had accepted more Teaching Fellows certified to teach English than there were English teaching jobs in the system, I lost all my benefits instantly. Now I've been approved to substitute teach in New York City, but substitute teachers do not get any of the benefits that permanently hired, full-time teachers get. So still no health insurance.

It's been said before, but it bears repeating, because it's so incredible: The United States is the only industrialized country in the world that does not have some kind of comprehensive national health care coverage for all its citizens. That is shameful. It's long past time to change it.