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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 released this week, conducted before the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, found that most Americans (62%) want to ensure that all Americans have health care coverage. It turns out that they believe it is the federal government’s responsibility to make it possible for them to participate in the program. 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.
While the percentage of Americans who say the government has a responsibility to ensure people have health insurance is on the rise, satisfaction with the health care system overall is also on the decline, according to a Gallup poll.
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.
Similar things have been said in numerous studies, but the United States has a much smaller share of its population per capita and gross domestic product (GDP) to cover a much smaller portion of the population and achieve a much lower life expectancy. As you are paying much more money. The United States is also affected by gun deaths, suicides, and drug overdoses.
KFF, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, and the Commonwealth Fund have all conducted detailed evaluations comparing the U.S. system with insurance in other countries. Importantly, administrative costs are much higher in the United States than in other wealthy countries. It’s probably fed by a universe of insurance companies that contribute to these costs.
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. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Medicare Advantage plans could end up costing the government even more, and that the sickest patients who need the most expensive procedures are less likely to receive coverage from private insurers. Documented going back to Medicare rather than facing a denial.
Issues surrounding health insurance are not unique to the United States. Perhaps the most notable government-run single-payer system, the UK’s National Health Service, had a satisfaction rating of 70% in 2010. According to a national survey, satisfaction is down to just 24% in 2023. It turns out 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 62% of Americans having a favorable view of it, according to a KFF tracker. 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 becomes uncertain as the new Trump administration develops its vision for the plan.
