New poll on single payer and a Medicare buy-in

Poll of Likely 2016 Voters
Progressive Change Institute, Conducted by GBA Strategies, January 9-15, 2015

SINGLE PAYER HEALTHCARE VIA MEDICARE

“Enact a national health plan in which all Americans would get their insurance through an expanded, universal form of Medicare.”

51%  Support
36%  Oppose
12%  Neutral

Percent supporting by party

79%  Democrat
23%  Republican
45%  Independent

MEDICARE BUY-IN FOR ALL

“Give all Americans the choice of buying health insurance through Medicare or private insurers, which would provide competition for insurance companies and more options for consumers.”

71%  Support
13%  Oppose
14%  Neutral

Percent supporting by party

77%  Democrat
63%  Republican
71%  Independent

https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.boldprogressives.org/images/Big_Ideas-Polling_PDF-1.pdf

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Comment:

By Don McCanne, MD

This poll shows that the nation’s attitude towards single payer remains essentially unchanged. About four-fifths of Democrats support single payer, three-fifths of Republicans are opposed, and Independents remain evenly split. But what about the attitude towards the “public option” – allowing all Americans the choice of purchasing Medicare instead of private insurance?

Support for the option of a Medicare buy-in is strong across the political spectrum. What can we make of this?

The debate in Congress during the reform process was highly partisan, the public option having been defeated by the defection of just one senator – Joseph Lieberman. The support that we now see amongst Republican voters is probably genuine. The opposition of the Republican members of Congress at that time was probably more related to the decision to defeat the Affordable Care Act (ACA) regardless of any benefits in it, just to “make Obama a one-term president.”

If the Republicans in Congress can forget about their prior opposition and decide that they want to move forward with constructive policies, those who want changes in Medicare may decide that placing it in competition with private insurance plans may bring market concepts to the traditional Medicare program. They can conveniently ignore the fact that the current market experiment with private Medicare Advantage plans has been unsuccessful in providing comparable benefits at a lower cost.

The Democrats in Congress are likely to support a renewed effort to enact a public option, especially since many still regret that it was not included in ACA.

We have to keep in mind that the insurance industry was successful in changing the public option from a Medicare plan to a public plan that had most of the unfavorable features of private health plans along with restrictions on how it could compete with private plans. This was to prevent it from having an “unfair advantage” in the marketplace – by giving the private plans an unfair advantage over the public option.

During the implementation of ACA we have seen that the private insurers still control the puppet strings. Should the political environment become more favorable for a public option, we can be sure that the insurance industry will once again write the legislation, creating a flawed public option that will surely invoke the wrath of those enrolling in the program, “proving” once again the meme that “the government can’t do anything right.”

These comments bring back memories of how the reform debate was hijacked by histrionics over the public option, which played into the hands of the insurance industry. The debate should have been over single payer, but remember we were emphatically and ungraciously denied a seat at the table from very early on in the process (back when the Democratic strategists in control wanted us to sell “CHOICE” to the public – choice of private health plans – and single payer was banned from the strategy sessions).

Little attention was given to the fact that adding another option – the public option – would still leave in place our inefficient, costly and highly dysfunctional system. We would have gained virtually none of the other benefits of single payer. And that would still be true if we abandon our quest for single payer and head off towards the Medicare buy-in. We would still have an outrageously expensive system with profound administrative waste, and intolerable inequities in affordability and access.

At least more Democrats favor single payer (79%) than favor the Medicare buy-in (71%). We need to start tailoring our message to appeal to the Republicans and Independents as well.