New Poll: Vast Majority Satisfied With Current Health Care Coverage

WASHINGTON – New polling out last week from Hart Research on behalf of “Get America Covered” finds that “fully 84% of insured consumers say they are satisfied with their current health insurance plan overall,” while “many uninsured individuals intend to purchase health insurance in 2020.”

These findings track closely with previous public opinion research from Gallup.  As CNN reported, “82% of Democrats said the quality of health care they received was either good or excellent.  A large majority, 71%, believed their health care coverage was either good or excellent.  Even when it comes to health care costs, 61% of Democrats said were satisfied with what they paid in health care.”  The same Gallup poll also notes that the vast majority of all Americans are satisfied with the quality of their health care – rating it ‘excellent’ or ‘good’ (80 percent) – and their level of coverage (69 percent).

The new polling data comes as some presidential candidates and lawmakers promote new government-controlled health insurance systems – like the public option, Medicare buy-in and Medicare for America – as “moderate” alternatives to Medicare for All.  But a new study reveals millions of Americans would, in fact, be unable to keep their current coverage under such a proposal – and underscores that a new government insurance system would be a “stepping stone” to a one-size-fits-all system run by politicians.

Meanwhile, new data reveals the tremendous strides our current system has made in expanding access and strengthening the quality of care.  Nearly a decade after its implementation, there is “an emerging mosaic of evidence that … the ACA is making some Americans healthier – and less likely to die,” The Washington Post reports.  They write:

With about 20 million Americans now covered through private health plans under the ACA’s insurance marketplaces or Medicaid expansions, researchers have been focusing on a question that was not an explicit goal of the law: whether anyone is healthier as a result … It is difficult to prove conclusively that the law has made a difference in people’s health, but strong evidence has emerged in the past few years.  Compared with similar people who have stable coverage through their jobs, previously uninsured people who bought ACA health plans with federal subsidies had a big jump in detection of high blood pressure and in the number of prescriptions they had filled, according to a 2018 study in the journal Health Affairs.  And after the law allowed young adults to stay longer on their parents’ insurance policies, fewer 19- to 25-year-olds with asthma failed to see a doctor because it cost too much, according to an analysis of survey results published earlier this year by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

And an updated analysis from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that, “almost 54 million people – or 27% of all adults under 65 – have pre-existing health conditions that would likely have made them uninsurable in the individual markets that existed in most states before the Affordable Care Act.”

Today, thanks to the free market and public programs working together, roughly 90 percent of Americans are covered, patients with pre-existing conditions are protected and young adults can stay on their parents’ health plans until they are 26 years old.  That’s why we should work together to build on what’s working and fix what’s broken – not start over with a one-size-fits-all government health insurance system we can’t afford.

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