Health Care: A Time To Be Bold

To members of Congress who intend to offer health care proposals: Do not be afraid to be bold.

That's the lesson that elected officials should take away from the mixed reaction to some of the proposals that have been offered for discussion in the past few weeks. Any elected official who wants to be viewed as adding constructively to the health care debate has to take chances with his or her proposal—and can.

Many politicians are fearful of the conservative attack lines on health care: It will lead to government control or rationing. Voters will balk at the cost. Access should be privately “owned”, not publicly guaranteed.

But recent poll findings from a variety of sources say that the public is ready to consider radical departures from the status quo. The Campaign for America’s Future has assembled this polling data for a report on the nation’s progressive politics that is scheduled for release before the Take Back America 2007 conference.

A CBS/New York Times poll in February 2007, for instance, showed that 70 percent of Americans considered the lack of health insurance a “very serious” problem. But, more significantly, A Gallup 69 percent think it is the responsibility of government to make sure all Americans have access to health coverage—twice as many as those who believe the responsibility lies elsewhere.

Furthermore, a majority of the public is willing to pay the price to get universal coverage. About 76 percent of the people polled by the CBS News and the New York Times this February said access to health care was more important than maintaining the Bush tax cuts. Three in five said they would be willing to have their own taxes increased to achieve universal coverage.

The Kaiser Family Foundation earlier this year found that 52 percent of the people it polled want to see a presidential candidate propose a new health plan that would make a major effort to provide insurance for nearly all of the uninsured—even if that would involve a substantial increase in spending. Only 14 percent would want to see a candidate basically keep things as they are.

It is true that a majority of Americans will say to pollsters that they don’t want a “government-run health care system.” But that response reflects the success of conservative propaganda caricatures of a government-run health care, not how they actually operate. The American Consumer Satisfaction Index measures how happy customers are with the products and services they receive from private companies and government agencies. It found that users of the government-run Veterans Administration health care system are significantly more satisfied than those in private managed care plans. Actual knowledge of how alternatives to the current system actually work can trump right-wing spin.

The problem for elected officials who want to push for progressive health care solutions is not the eventual willingness of the public to accept them. Indeed, the public is hungry for precisely the kind of discussion that is being sparked by the health care plans being put on the table for discussion during the 2008 presidential campaign. It is a debate that should not be, and will not be, shouted down by the deadly alliance of conservative ideologues and business interests fighting to lock in the status quo.

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future