A new survey of Americans finds utter and complete dissatisfaction with our health care system, reports Amanda Seitz for AP News. Nearly nine in ten Americans say that health care is not handled well or extremely well, including health care for older adults. Most Americans want Congress to overhaul our health care system and think Medicare and Medicaid should be expanded to cover long-term care. They want guaranteed access to care.
The Associated Press/NORC poll finds that more than half of Americans think the US is not handling health care too well or well at all. Just slightly more than three in ten Americans, 32 percent, think the US handles health care somewhat well. Only 11 percent believe that the US is handling health care for older adults very well or extremely well.
On top of the dissatisfaction with our health care system writ large, almost 80 percent of Americans worry to some degree about being able to get the care they need when they need it. As it is, tens of millions of Americans are forced to choose between health care and other basic necessities, forcing many of them to forego critical health care.
As for the cost of prescription drugs, more than nine in ten Americans believe our government is not handling this issue appropriately. How could they? Drug companies are raking in mega profits as millions of Americans die because they can’t afford their medicines. And, though millions of Americans import low-cost drugs from abroad, they are technically forbidden from doing so, even when it could save their lives. Prices abroad can be 90 percent less than in the US.
What’s the solution? Most Americans–two-thirds–want the federal government to step in and ensure access to care for all Americans. Support for the federal government to step in has grown significantly in the last five years. In 2019, 57 percent thought guaranteeing health care was a government responsibility. In 2017, 52 percent thought so.
Of course, the simple most cost-effective solution would be for the federal government to negotiate fair prices for health care services, as every other country does, and expand traditional Medicare to everyone. But, only four in ten people polled in this survey supported this solution.
A majority of people like the idea of a “public option,” allowing people to choose to buy health insurance administered through the government. I once liked it as well…until I came to appreciate how powerful and influential the corporate health insurers are in undermining the public option. We see it today with Medicare Advantage, which is corporate health insurance that has been killing traditional Medicare. Corporate health insurers market and design health plans to attract the healthy, make it difficult for many people to get costly and complex care, and encourage the people with the greatest health care needs to use the public option.
People too often don’t appreciate that they could get diagnosed with a costly and complex disease or to suffer a major accident in the unforeseeable future. Anything short of comprehensive coverage–one policy that will meet whatever needs you have from whichever physicians you need to see–is a gamble.
One study, published in June in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, found that Medicare for all would have likely saved 338,000 lives lost to Covid-19.
As Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal tweeted last week, “In the richest country in the world, no one should die or go into debt just because they don’t have access to healthcare.” “We need Medicare for All now.”
Here’s more from Just Care:
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