It should be no surprise that the Affordable Care Act is more popular among Dakota Free Press readers than either the House or Senate Republicans’ repeal/replace measures. But in the poll I offered from last Wednesday, June 28, through breakfast this morning asking you what health care policy you favor, over 90% of you said we need something other than the ACA:
- Single-payer: 61% (180 votes)
- Expand Medicare to public option: 18% (52)
- Repeal ACA: 9% (25)
- Keep ACA—no changes: 4% (13)
- Other: 4% (12)
- GOP Senate plan: 2% (7)
- GOP House plan: 1% (4)
79% of you want a more direct public role in paying for health insurance, either in the form of a single-payer system (by far the most popular choice), in which one taxpayer-funded federal agency would pay for all necessary medical services for all Americans, or in the form of a “public option“, the opportunity for non-retirement-age Americans to buy into Medicare.
All other options offered were in single-digit percentages, well within the standard online-poll margin of error, which is just a little smaller than the whoppers Kristi Noem will tell about health care policy at her town hall Wednesday morning in Rapid City. Notably, almost twice as many respondents would be willing to play the Sasse/Paul/Trump tease of simply repealing the Affordable Care Act as would want to keep the health care status quo without changes.
Realizing that the Affordable Care Act is no longer enough of a bogeyman to win support for their greedy wealthcare tax cut, Republicans are fanning fears of single-payer as the liberal danger lurking if they don’t pass their healthcare bills. Senator Bernie Sanders believes American public opinion is shifting to embrace single-payer. But Real Clear Politics liberal pundit Bill Scher warns us liberals that single-payer might be popular enough to win us an election, but it will be our quicksand when a Democratically captured Congress tries to enact it as surely as “repeal-and-replace” is drowning the Trumpublicans:
Already we’ve seen single-payer pushes founder in deep blue Vermont and California because the upfront costs were steep and few were willing to support the necessary tax increases. The controversial line that greased passage of the Affordable Care Act – “If you like your health care plan, you can keep it” – would be non-operative in a single-payer debate; people currently satisfied with their health insurance would instead be told they would have to give it up for a government plan. The insurance industry would be literally fighting for its life, and would spend millions stoking every possible concern anyone could have about a wholesale revision of one-sixth of the United States economy [Bill Scher, “Democrats, Beware the Single-Payer Siren,” Real Clear Politics, 2017.07.03].
I agree that passing single-payer would be a significant challenge. But we Democrats passed the New Deal, Medicare, and the Affordable Care Act. We’re up for a challenge.
I voted for the public option, and here’s why. It gives Republicans a choice. If fear of socialism is so ingrained in the uneducated, let them return to their pre-Obamacare policy and pay too much for fake insurance. (God bless ’em if they get really sick.) Forcing single payer on unwilling voters is just a bit too German for me. Everyone having the choice to buy a Medicare policy (It would probably cost about $280 per enrollee a month) may hurt insurance companies but they put us over a barrel and did their dirty business to us for decades. If BigInsurance hasn’t diversified into other businesses by now, their CEO’s should be removed for poor foresight.
I voted for Medicare for all, but I am willing to go with the majority on single-payer.
Damn Germans. They should stay out of our healthcare policy.
South Dakota is the best state.
Right, Grudzie. Do you know that Obama is half German? Maybe that’s why Obamacare made Republicans so mad. Telling people what to do without choices, is rarely popular.
I did not know that, Mr. Lansing, but I can see it by the slope of his brow now that you mention it.
All your goats are belong to us.
But I have had them trimmed and dyed with lots of red and put blue ribbons between their ears.
Reflects readership only and how out of touch this blog is with the rest of the country. Even the Huff Post can’t spin it: “Fifty-two percent of Americans who identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party now favor a single-payer system, up from 33 percent in 2014 and 43 percent as recently as this January.”
Keep being irrelevant.
Overall results: “33 percent of poll respondents said they favor a single-payer system, in which the government covers medical expenses with tax money, over the current system based on private insurance companies.
That’s an increase of five percentage points since January, and twelve points since single payer was polled in December 2015.
60 percent of Americans who were surveyed said the federal government is responsible for providing healthcare coverage to all Americans, compared to 39 percent who said it was not the government’s job.
The poll comes a day after Senate Republicans unveiled the first draft of their plan to repeal ObamaCare.”
http://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/339247-poll-support-grows-for-single-payer-healthcare
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/06/23/public-support-for-single-payer-health-coverage-grows-driven-by-democrats/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/democratic-support-for-single-payer-health-care-is-rising_us_594d8acde4b05c37bb768420
Who says Huff Post is relevant?
Irrelevant to the past, perhaps. I prefer to think of my readers and poll respondents as ahead of the curve, working to lead our thoughts to a better future.