Dazed, confused and depressed about health care
- To cover all children
- To protect against financial ruin due to a major illness or accident
- To obtain coverage regardless of a pre-existing condition
- To have health coverage continue even when losing a job, changing jobs, or starting up a business
- To have "affordable" health costs (premiums, deductibles, and out-of-pocket) relative to their income
- To keep current insurance if they want.
But how to get there? CR found absolutely no consensus among the people. There's a third that likes a mixed public-private solution, a third that prefers a single-payer system, and a mix of people who believe that tax incentives are best. But there is no clear winner.
CR spoke to Jacob Hacker who wrote the Great Book, The Great Risk Shift, about this survey result. He said, "The Achilles' heel of reform is that most Americans do have some source of insurance most of the time. The easiest way to kill reform is to say that this change will destroy what you have and will make you pay more for less."
Hacker's recommendation? Issue a "clear, simple, and unthreatening vision of reform that meets public concerns head-on."
Health Populi's Hot Points: Consumers blame high and growing health care costs on pharmaceutical companies, insurers, lawyers, and politicians...but not their health providers, neither doctors nor hospitals. That's because consumers are blaming the costs they viscerally feel and see. These would be the bills they pay at the point-of-purchase for drugs, their health insurance premiums, the clinic requiring the out-of-pocket payment at admission. But the greatest costs in the system are generated by hospitals and in doctors' practices, both of which often generate too much care that doesn't work (see my previous posts on the merits of value- and evidence-based health care, the brilliant work of John Wennberg et. al., and Shannon Brownlee's book, Overtreated). In addition to these costs, consumers need to spend some time figuring out how to live healthier lives, which would have a direct impact on their personal health spending.
PS--See this week's JAMA on "From Waste to Value in Health Care" by Dr. Thomas Boat and colleagues on how to implement concerted, local efforts to reduce waste in health care.
posted by Jane Sarasohn-Kahn at
5:15 AM
1 Comments:
I wonder how much less confused people would be if health insurance & pharmaceutical companies weren't spreading fear and misinformation. Remember the "Harry and Louise" ads spreading fear about losing coverage due to an attempt at reform? (Then the insurance cos. promoted rationing themselves with HMOs.) Remember big Pharma saying that cutting their rapacious profits would kill innovative drug research? (Despite the fact that NIH funds most basic science research. Pharma funds the next big blockbuster, while hiding lethal side effects e.g. Vioxx.)
This is all so painfully familiar. Remember tobacco companies saying that smoking cigarettes didn't cause cancer? How long will it take before people wise up about insurance and Pharma propaganda and allow access to health CARE vs. private insurance? Probably more than the 40 years it took for them to figure out smoking kills you.
Instead of expensive effective cartoons & ads, and underfunded schools, we need more money going to real education in this country, so people can tell the difference between self-serving propaganda and real data.
(No, I am not a 20 year old long-haired radical. I am a middle-aged short-haired conservative entrepreneur active in his community, who is tired of corporate interests trumping public interests.)
By
J, At
March 5, 2009 9:38 AM
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