Victor Fuchs, the eminent health economist at Stanford, in an e-mail message stated:
Earlier this month there was a Roper-Associated Press poll of 1,500 representative Americans. The poll was cleverer than many because it probed more deeply into the extent of support for reform.
My reading of the replies leads to the following conclusion: Despite all the media coverage (or maybe because of it), most of the public has a very limited understanding of the health care system and health policy. They think the insurance companies are the main problem. They think an employer mandate is a good idea because employers pay for care. They want to control cost, but oppose every policy that might do that except for thinking that drug company and insurance company profits are too high. They say they want everyone to have access to care but only one in four favors an individual mandate.
Why is the public’s understanding so limited?
To what extent does the politicians’ inability to produce more meaningful, sustainable reform reflect their (correct) reading of the public’s ambiguous, ambivalent support of such reform?
I know about the special interests, and their lobbyists, but it is too easy to put all the blame on them.
It’s a good reminder that perhaps the biggest surprise about health reform is that it may actually happen.
