Health costs threaten to overshadow Biden’s historic coverage gains, Axios, May 14, 2024, by Caitlin Owens
President Biden has come closer than any of his Democratic predecessors to reaching the party’s standing goal of universal health coverage, but unaffordable care costs may overshadow the achievement.
Voters feeling the pain of inflation are more concerned about their own health costs than whether everyone will have some level of coverage.
- Voters’ most common health care priority by far is lowering out-of-pocket costs, KFF polling found.
- “Certainly we have more people covered, whose concern has shifted from fear of being discriminated against (by insurers) to fear of not being able to access care affordability,” said Democratic strategist Chris Jennings.
- “Health reform efforts in the past have been largely framed around expanding insurance coverage,” said KFF executive vice president Larry Levitt. “Whenever the next health reform debate comes, it will likely be focused on the cost burden, including for those with insurance.”
- A Commonwealth Fund survey last year found that more than half of people who buy their own coverage on the ACA marketplaces or elsewhere said it was difficult to afford care.
- People have always been concerned about health care costs, but the salience goes up when I can’t pay for food and milk and gas and everything else,” said Harvard professor emeritus Robert Brendon, an expert on public opinion and health care. “The temperature about this rises because they’re having trouble paying their bills.”
The bottom line: “We’re always going to be (going) at the quality of health care and the cost,” said Wendell Primus, a former adviser to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “Those issues are not going to go away. Even if we solve them temporarily, they’re never going to go away.”
[HJM bolding]
Comment:
By Don McCanne, M.D.
So people are more concerned about their own health care costs than they are about whether or not other people are covered for their costs. This would be better phrased if we said that people are concerned about their own health care costs, but they also want to be participants in a thriving economy where everyone else is doing well.
What do you suppose they would think if they were offered a system that provided better coverage than they have now but cost them less? Do you think that they would object if that system offered the same comprehensive benefits to everyone else, but was made affordable by funding it through progressive taxation? Would the fact that the very wealthy paid more taxes that would have absolutely no negative impact on their lifestyles be a reason to reject a program that ensured that everyone had access to the health care that they needed? Of course, that is precisely what a well-designed single payer system would bring us. The cost might not ever go away, but we can readily manage it for everyone by the simple process of enacting and implementing single payer.
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