Public or Private, Americans Love Their Health Care

Gallup has a new poll on American attitudes toward healthcare coverage and quality. The key number here is 80: About 80 percent of Americans call their plan "Excellent or Good," whether it's private or public care. Is that good or bad news for health care reform?

You could make the case for either. On the one hand, the fact that public health care is so popular is a pretty good rebuttal to the Right's criticism that a public plan would result in significantly worse coverage and quality of care. On the other hand, this graph helps to explain why even if Americans approve of health care reform in the abstract, they have trouble swallowing ideas that sound like rationing or "service changes," because the vast majority like their health care already and don't want to see disruptive reform.

Interesting point tucked toward the bottom of the piece: The article's author Jeffrey Jones suggests that Medicaid does not poll as highly as Medicare:

An analysis of the data by age suggests that the private-government gap may be so small because senior citizens -- the vast majority of whom are covered by Medicare -- give very positive ratings to their healthcare coverage and quality. Among non-seniors, private plans tend to get better ratings than the traditional government plans on both coverage and quality.

This article available online at:

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2009/09/public-or-private-americans-love-their-health-care/24429/