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The cold-blooded assassination of the health insurance CEO has sparked public anger against the health insurance industry. Should Americans be angry at the ugliness of that fact?
Murder suspect Luigi Mangione is preparing for his murder trial in New York, and his lawyer says he will plead not guilty. But for the rest of the country, there is an opportunity, albeit an awkward one, to examine long-standing grievances about a health care system unique in developed countries that squeezes profits from patients for private companies.
CNN’s Tami Luby collects insurance horror stories from CNN readers. They include a college graduate who had to battle cancer and her insurance company’s decision to pay $13,000 a month out of pocket for life-saving medication. It was. It’s no wonder that a significant minority of Americans report having medical debt.
a gallup poll A survey released this week but conducted before the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson found that most Americans (62%) want to make sure all Americans have health insurance. It turns out that he believes it is the federal government’s responsibility to make this possible. A minority of 36% said that the government was not responsible.
Gallup has been asking this question for years, and this new data comes from 11 years ago, when the rollout of the private health insurance exchanges created by the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) was rocky. It reflects a gradual reversal. At the time, a minority (42%) said it was the federal government’s responsibility to ensure that people had health insurance, while a majority (56%) said they disagreed.
There is a partisan narrative behind this number. That’s because nearly all Democrats (90%) now say the government is to blame, up from just over two-thirds in 2013. That’s true, although only about a third of Republicans currently hold the same view. That’s up from just 12% who said the government was responsible in 2013.
In any case, health care reform efforts to increase government participation in the health care system are as intense as they were when then-President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act in 2010. You will be met with resistance.
The percentage of Americans who say the government has a responsibility to ensure that people have insurance is on the rise. downward shift Gallup polls indicate that people are satisfied with the health care system overall.
In 2013, a majority of Americans (54%) were satisfied with the quality of health care in the United States. Today, that percentage has dropped to 44%.
In Gallup’s more than 20 years of research, satisfaction with health insurance has never been higher. It hit a high of 41% in 2012 and is now 28%, with Obamacare significantly reforming the insurance industry, forcing insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions and encouraging young people to stay on their parents’ insurance. This is the lowest level since the early 2000s, several years before the mandate was introduced. As I turned 26, my Medicaid coverage expanded significantly.
No other country is as wealthy as the United States, but no other country does this, relying on employers to provide voluntary health insurance to large swaths of the country.
Some countries have government-run health care systems. It may also require citizens to pay for more affordable private insurance. All countries except the United States insure nearly all of their citizens.
The same has been stated in numerous studies, but the United States has increased its efforts per capita and as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP) in order to cover a smaller portion of the population and achieve a lower life expectancy. This means they are paying a much higher amount. average life expectancy in america We are also affected by gun deaths, suicides, and drug overdoses.
KFF, Peter G. Peterson Foundation and commonwealth fund Every policy includes a detailed evaluation comparing the US system to insurance in other countries. Importantly, administrative costs are much higher in the United States than in other wealthy countries. Perhaps fed by the world of insurance companies that contribute to that cost.
One major difference with the United States is that other countries require universal insurance coverage and are more heavily subsidized than in the United States.
Here, the government provides health care only to the neediest people through Medicaid and to older Americans who generally qualify for government-run Medicare health insurance. Thanks to Obamacare, the government also subsidizes care for people up to a certain income level who don’t get insurance through their employer. The government also subsidizes employer-provided health insurance in the form of tax breaks.
A notable side story is the increasing number of Medicare beneficiaries choosing private Medicare Advantage plans run by private insurance companies. wall street journal recently announced that Medicare Advantage plans could end up costing the government even more, and that the sickest patients, when they need the most expensive procedures, are denied coverage by private insurers. Documented going back to Medicare instead of facing .
Issues surrounding health insurance are not unique to the United States. Perhaps the most notable government-run single-payer system, the UK National Health Service, boasted a satisfaction rate of 70% in 2010. That drops to just 24% in 2023. According to a national surveyHowever, the survey found that Brits want to improve the system to reduce waiting times for services, rather than abolishing it for other purposes.
However, during the recently concluded presidential campaign, health care remained largely absent from the political conversation in the United States, and polls showed that health care did not rank among voters’ top concerns.
President-elect Donald Trump was elected with only a “concept” of health care policy. He defeated Vice President Kamala Harris, who had proposed minimal expansion of Medicare rather than major changes to the system.
The last major change to the system was Obamacare, which paid a short-term political price when Democrats lost the House majority. The law is gaining popularity, with one survey showing that 62% of Americans have a favorable opinion of it. KFF tracking survey. But it is clear that we have not solved the problem of making health care affordable.
A major step toward lowering prescription drug costs came during the Biden administration, when Democrats won the right to negotiate lower prices for certain drugs for Medicare after years of effort. But its future is uncertain as the new Trump administration develops the concept for the plan.
