Left-wing, progressive politicians often portray America's health insurance system as a moral atrocity — a cesspool of greed, waste, and dysfunction so hopelessly beyond repair that only a total government takeover can save it.
So they'd likely be surprised at the results of a new poll, which shows that 90% of insured Americans are satisfied with their coverage.
Three in four rate their health plan as either good or very good.
And satisfaction ratings barely differed across political, racial, or socioeconomic groups.
America's health insurance system isn't perfect.
But, as these numbers suggest, it works pretty well for most people — which is more than can be said for the single payer or universal coverage health systems in many other developed nations.
The Echelon Insights poll, commissioned by the organization this writer leads, the Pacific Research Institute, finds that satisfaction rates are stable across a whole range of different groups.
Among Americans earning between $30,000 and $49,000 a year, 94% report being either very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with their health coverage.
That figure is virtually identical to the 92% of Americans making more than $125,000 who were satisfied.
Similarly, satisfaction rates among white patients are nearly identical to those among black patients and Hispanic patients.
Even across political allegiances, most Americans generally like their coverage — with 93% of Republicans falling into the satisfied/very satisfied category, compared to 91% of Democrats.
This doesn't mean there aren't problems with the current system.
It simply suggests that those problems aren't as intractable as critics often insist.
The most common complaints about health coverage, according to the PRI survey, are that premiums, deductibles, and co-pays are too high.
A sizable share of Americans also wish to see fewer restrictions on specialist tests, and better access to primary care doctors.
These are concrete problems that deserve serious attention from policymakers in Washington. Yet, in a healthcare debate dominated by progressives and socialists, such concerns rarely take center stage.
As far as leftists like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., are concerned, the fundamental shortcoming of America's health system is our collective failure to treat coverage as a human right — and to anoint the federal government as the sole healthcare provider, administrator, and payer.
Framed in this way, nothing short of the complete abolition of private coverage will do.
In reality, though, Americans don't need a socialist healthcare revolution that ends in Medicare for All — nor do they want one.
According to the PRI survey, voters leaned more towards opposing (43%) than supporting (40%) a single government-run insurance program — with 30% saying they would strongly oppose it.
That's compared to just 16% of the country that definitely supports replacing the status quo with such a program, while just 24% say they probably support the idea.
Enthusiasm for this reform would likely be even lower if more Americans were aware of the crises in socialized medicine unfolding abroad in places like Canada and the United Kingdom.
That a policy like Medicare for All remains so prominent in our politics suggests that the discussion over healthcare has come unmoored from reality. Americans have reached a consensus about the status of the nation's health system. And that consensus is overwhelmingly positive.
They've also converged around a set of very specific problems they'd like policymakers to address — mostly having to do with access and out-of-pocket costs.
The good news for those conservatives who favor market-based reforms is that most of these problems can be addressed by promoting greater choice and competition within the private and public sectors for health coverage.
Unlike Medicare for All, such policies could simultaneously reduce patient costs while expanding access to high-quality care — without fundamentally altering the foundations of the nation's healthcare system.
In other words, they would give Americans exactly what they've been asking for.
Sally C. Pipes is president, CEO, and the Thomas W. Smith fellow in healthcare policy at the Pacific Research Institute. Her latest book is "False Premise, False Promise: The Disastrous Reality of Medicare for All," (Encounter Books 2020). Follow her on Twitter @sallypipes. Read Sally Pipes' Reports — More Here.
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