U.S. Public Wants Health Care System Revamped

by Mike Hall, Sep 27, 2006

Health care that works for all Americans—we don’t have such a system now. But we want one. A new survey shows the majority of the U.S. public supports revamping the U.S. health care system so everyone receives a core group of guaranteed benefits.

The Citizens’ Health Care Working Group, a federally appointed commission, recommends that by 2012 all Americans have access to affordable health care, with guaranteed benefits and protection against very high out-of-pocket expenses. According to the report:

Americans clearly want a system that guarantees health care for everyone….It should be public policy written in law that all Americans have affordable access to health care.

The group was created by the 2003 Medicare prescription drug legislation and charged with gauging the views of consumers and health care professionals on improving the health system. Based on these findings, the group is making recommendations to Congress and the president. We reported on its interim findings in June.

During its 18-month survey, the health care panel held 84 meetings across the country with more than 6,000 people attending. More than 14,000 responses came in to its online poll.

The group makes six recommendations:

• Establish public policy that all Americans have affordable health care;
• Guarantee financial protection against very high health care costs;
• Define core benefits and services for all Americans;
• Innovative integrated community health networks;
• Promote efforts to improve quality of care and efficiency; and
• End-of-life care should be fundamentally restructured so that people of all ages have increased access to these services in the environment they choose.

Says AFL-CIO President John Sweeney:

What is striking in this report is that Americans have said they want much more than incremental changes that fall short of reaching our goal of universal health care. In outlining what Americans want—and do not now get—from our health care system, the report provides a stark illustration of just how little this Congress is doing to address our nation’s health care crisis. In fact, the recommendation in support of a core set of comprehensive benefits is in marked contrast to the promotion of high-deductible health plans, which focus exclusively on cost of care rather than the appropriateness and necessity of care.

Rather than address the nation’s health care crisis, the Bush administration and many congressional Republicans are looking to shift more health care costs to individuals and families through schemes such as health savings accounts and high-deductible health plans. And more and more employers are dropping health coverage for their workers.

The report notes that 1 million more people have been added to the rolls of the uninsured since the health advisory group was established. Today, the nonprofit Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reported that 2005 marked the fifth straight year that the number of Americans without health care rose significantly, while those with employer-provided health care dropped.

From 2000 to 2005, the number of people without health care coverage rose by more than 7 million to 46.6 million and increased as a share of the population from 14.2 percent to 15.9 percent.

Sweeney says the report and the growing number of uninsured:

should be a wake up call to Congress that our health care system fails far too many Americans—even those working families who now have coverage but are still struggling under enormous costs. We stand ready to help make possible the policy of affordable, quality health care for all Americans by 2012.

The Citizens’ Health Care Working Group’s findings were presented to Bush, who has 45 days to comment and issue his own report and present both to Congress, where five committees will hold hearings.

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