The Philadelphia Inquirer
July 5, 2002
By James Kuhnhenn
Inquirer Washington Bureau
Almost 10 years after President Bill Clinton tried to overhaul the nation’s health-care system, the American people appear ready to try again.
The plight of the uninsured is edging back into political consciousness, say lawmakers, lobbyists and pollsters, creating fertile ground for a new push toward universal health insurance.
The new direction – away from incremental measures and toward more ambitious goals such as universal coverage – is politically significant, as Republicans and Democrats struggle for control of Congress in November’s elections. Health care could compete with President Bush’s war on terrorism for voters’ attention.
Ayres (Republican pollster Whit Ayres) detected the new trend in public sentiment in a nationwide poll of 1,000 people he conducted March 18-20. He was struck by the response to the question: Would you like to see a government-owned, government-run health-care system in America?
Forty percent of the respondents said yes. “It’s a little higher than I expected,” Ayres said. The poll had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
Democrats, who had abandoned plans for an ambitious health-care restructuring, are reassessing their strategy of tackling health-care issues in small bites. Those efforts, most notably prescription-drug benefits for seniors and patient-friendly HMOs, have led to huge partisan rows in Congress but no real solutions to help Americans get affordable access to doctors and medicines.
Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D., S.D.):
“You have to address cost, access and quality from a comprehensive point of view. And while we failed 10 years ago, I think you could say we failed in the 10 years since to deal with these issues incrementally. There isn’t any outstanding success story to talk about.”
Comment: It is not surprising to see that a Republican pollster would characterize universal health care coverage as not only a government-run but also a government-OWNED health care system. Americans would surely emphatically reject socialized medicine. Yet 40% supported this, the most extreme version of comprehensive reform!
Ironically, the moderate position now is to support national health insurance while continuing to support our existing private and public ownership of the health care delivery system. Supporting incrementalism while rejecting any consideration of comprehensive approaches has now become an extreme position.
It is now our task to be certain that the public and our political leaders have a clear understanding of the equity, efficiency, and comprehensiveness of a publicly administered program of universal health insurance. In this election season, our politicians must hear this message.