Contrary to the continuing claims by tea party advocates and conservative Republicans that “Americans” want to repeal health care reform, national polls keep showing that a majority of Americans actually want to keep the new health care reform law in place, and many want to expand it – chiefly by adding a public-option policy akin to Medicare.
The latest poll reflecting Americans’ majority support for health care reform is the McClatchy Newspapers-Marist poll. It shows that voters, by margins of 2-to-1 or greater, especially want to keep the protections already in place that now bar insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions, canceling policies after people become ill, and placing limits on coverage. They also value the option of keeping their children covered on their family policies until they are 26, and the focus on required coverage for preventive care.
Americans support reform
Support for reform should continue to expand as new health care rules for 2011 take effect. The first set will require insurers to spend a certain percentage of their income from customers’ insurance premiums on actual reimbursements for their customers’ medical care, as opposed to spending exorbitantly on executive salaries, private planes, lavish stock options and other extravagant overhead.
Under the reform act, insurers in the new year will have to spend at least 85 percent of their revenue from premiums on health care for large group customers, and at least 80 percent of the premium revenues on their customers in small groups and individual policies. The differential reflects what insurers contend are higher costs to provide more individualized service for customers with personal individual policies and members of small groups. (Insurance contractors’ administrative overhead on Medicare, by contrast, hovers around 6 percent.)