You know a public policy idea is really starting to take hold when you see who’s lined up against it. In this case, it's Medicare for All that's grabbed the public's—and particularly the Democratic Party's—attention, and it's the corporate, for-profit healthcare industry that's merging forces to fight it.
Health insurers and drug companies see a blue wave coming, so they've formed a new organization to fight the essential healthcare reform Democrats are vowing to take on. The Partnership for America’s Health Care Future will fight against any effort by Democrats to promote Medicare for All, using ads against it and funding research studies to try to prove it's a bad idea. Because the rest of the developed world hasn't proven that it works.
They're also going to be going after "more centrist members" of the Democratic party, hewing them away from the growing cadre that supports Medicare for All. "Their worry," says an insurance industry source, "is about 2020 and it's becoming the litmus test for Democrats." Another industry lobbyist says the insurance companies "have felt that they really need to push back on the single-payer stuff."
The group has already hired a spokesperson, Erik Smith, who is already spinning wildly. "Most Americans support common sense, pragmatic solutions that don't interrupt the coverage they rely upon for themselves and their families," he says. "We agree—and that's what we'll be supporting." But the survey actually says that "six in ten (59 percent) favor a national health plan, or Medicare-for-all, in which all Americans would get their insurance from a single government plan—including a majority of both Democrats and independents and about one-third of Republicans."
That's from the Kaiser Family Foundation monthly health survey last March, the poll that has become the gold standard in healthcare policy. They also found that a full three-quarters of the voting population—yep, 75 percent—would support "as an option for anyone who wants it, but people who currently have other forms of coverage can keep the coverage they already have." That even gets a healthy majority of Republicans behind it, at 64 percent. So the fact that nearly two-thirds of House Democrats have signed onto a Medicare for All bill means that those House Democrats are far more attuned to what voters—even Republicans!—want, meaning it's going to be an uphill climb for the bad guys.
Making it harder is the fact that everyone thinks of them as the bad guys. Case in point, 72 percent of those KFF voters polled say pharmaceutical companies have "too much influence" in policy-making. Oddly more Republicans (74 percent) say that than Democrats (65 percent), so there's clearly one major villain here. The insurance industry might want to rethink who it's chosen as a bed-fellow in this operation. So might the American Medical Association and the Federation of American Hospitals, which are also part of the group.
The Affordable Care Act has done a lot of good for a lot of people, but arguably the most important thing it's done in terms of healthcare reform and policy is educate the public on how this all works. That and proving to the public and the policy-makers that it can happen, and that's allowed them to think big on what our healthcare system could look like. So yeah, the big profit-makers here should be worried about that big blue wave that's coming, and they should also think seriously about how they're swimming against its tide.
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