The American Public on Health Care-The Missing Perspective - (Page 55)

Figure HH. Support for Government Involvement in Health Care Agree Requiring that performance ratings on doctors and hospitals be publicly available Requiring health care providers to publish their costs Requiring health care providers to cover pre-existing conditions Requiring all large employers to provide health insurance coverage to all full-time employees Creating national or regional health care exchanges to allow insurance to be purchased across state lines Providing assistance to low income individuals and families to buy health insurance Allowing everyone to buy Medicare coverage at group rates, regardless of age 0 20 40 Strongly agree 81% 60% 75% 58% 75% 54% 72% 54% 71% 52% 69% 52% 60% 43% 60 80 100 expressed a preference for maintaining a system based on private insurance rather than replacing the current system with a government-run health care system.35 The public favors government requiring large employers to provide insurance. They also want government to require that insurers cover pre-existing conditions, and to provide assistance to low-income Americans so they can afford coverage. because people change jobs now on average every five years and sometimes more often.” As one woman explains, “The challenge,” says a Californian, “for all of us is to figure out how do we preserve what is good about employer-based coverage because people who have insurance through their employer do not want us to abandon that but, at the same time, we cannot be completely dependent upon that “The fundamental idea for health insurance, to me, is that the amount that you have to pay for basic coverage should not depend on whether you had any preexisting conditions, what your risk factors are, or what you actually experience after you start in the insurance plan. You ought to have that basic coverage.” Another area for government involvement is expanding health insurance markets across state lines to lower costs. Currently, insurance availability and cost vary by region. Insurance in one state can cost twice as much as a neighboring state, where a larger population may enable insurers to spread costs across a larger pool of insured individuals. 71% favor creating national or regional “health plan exchanges” so that they can buy insurance across state lines to access competitive rates. According to the Committee for Economic Development, such a program would ideally be overseen by an independent group— modeled on the Federal Reserve—to build faith in the new system among patients, providers, and insurers.36 It’s noteworthy that one proposal for expanding coverage for the uninsured—allowing anyone to buy Medicare coverage at group rates, regardless of age—gets significantly less strong support than any other policy prescription surveyed. This suggests reservations about expanding government’s role as the payerof-choice in the health care system (see Figure HH). 35 Accessed at: http://www.gallup.com/poll/4708/Healthcare-System.aspx, 35 CED, p.2 55 http://www.gallup.com/poll/4708/Healthcare-System.aspx

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