Americans with health insurance are for the most part satisfied with that insurance, according to the inaugural monthly issues survey conducted for Daily Kos by Civiqs. Forty-five percent favor "a national health plan, sometimes called Medicare-for-all, in which all Americans get their insurance from a single government plan," and 43 percent oppose.
Since expanding health insurance (with Medicare for all as a flashpoint) is a key issue going into the 2020 election, this survey attempts to get a baseline sense of how people are thinking about their coverage and their level of satisfaction with it. Among those surveyed, 51 percent have employer-based insurance, 20 percent have Medicare, 9 percent have an individual policy like those provided by the Affordable Care Act, and 5 percent have Medicaid coverage. Eight percent of those surveyed are uninsured. That's roughly in line with the Kaiser Family Foundation's analysis of the population as a whole (not counting Medicaid, since KFF is looking at total population which includes all the children on CHIP and Medicaid, bumping their figure up to 21 percent).
Satisfaction with coverage is relatively high, with a total 72 percent being very satisfied (34 percent) or somewhat satisfied (38 percent). Seven percent total are very unsatisfied, and again 8 percent don't have coverage. But when asked "How satisfied are you with the way the healthcare system currently works for you," satisfaction drops to 58 percent total (24 percent very satisfied and 34 percent somewhat satisfied). People are really pleased to have coverage, but they don't so much like the system that's providing it.
Drilling down to the crosstabs, though, you see where the satisfaction numbers are being driven. A whopping 88 percent of people aged 65 or older—the ones on Medicare—like what they have and 85 percent are at least somewhat satisfied by how the system works for them. Not too surprisingly, it's the 65+ group (and Republicans) who are most opposed to a single-payer idea, at nearly 50 percent (82 percent of Republicans, too, because Barack Obama or something).
What's particularly intriguing in the crosstabs is the slight plurality of people with employer-based health insurance—46 percent to 43 percent—who favor the idea of a single-payer kind of system. That suggests that the gnashing of teeth we're seeing in the punditry (see all the coverage of Sen. Kamala Harris saying she's okay with private insurance going away) on this issue is overblown. People who have to deal with the vagaries of private insurance—including employer-based coverage—don't see moving away from it as a terrifying leap. As premiums and co-pays and deductibles continue to rise, that willingness to look at a different solution is just going to increase.
Convincing people that the kind of coverage their parents and grandparents get on Medicare would work for them, too, isn't going to be that scary anymore. It's the parents and grandparents who will be the problem, because Republicans are going to do their level best to scare them into thinking that giving it to someone else means taking it away from them.