BETHESDA, Md. – Leading Republican and Democratic pollsters contributing to the latest issue of Health Affairs, The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere, agree that despite the prominent role health care is playing in the 2008 presidential campaign, major reforms may not be in the cards.
Deep partisan divides combined with a worsening economy may permit only incremental changes, pollsters William McInturff, a Republican, and Celinda Lake, a Democrat, say in an edition devoted entirely to the topic of health care reform.
McInturff and colleague Lori Weigel analyzed data from multiple national polls to show how perceptual barriers that doomed previous major reform efforts still linger, such as an unwillingness to accept certain tradeoffs in return for universal health care coverage.
However, McInturff and Weigel note, two factors are changing the climate: small-business owners’ growing desire for major reform, and a growing public perception that investing in health care reform is both essential and affordable, especially in light of how much is being spent on military efforts abroad.
Lake and fellow Democratic pollsters Robert Crittenden and David Mermin focused on key opportunities and drawbacks for health care reform, noting that the 2008 election could “set the stage for the most significant reform of the U.S. health care system since Medicare,” but a well-funded opposition is still to be expected.
What is unique this year, they say, is that “the core ideas and rhetoric embedded in the leading health care proposals are more in tune with the experience and values of voters than they have been in previous reform battles.”
Other articles in the May/June issue of Health Affairs – entitled “Health Reform Revisited,” and supported by a grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation – address the role of taxes and budgets in health care reform; hospital and physician gain-sharing; and potential formulas for compromise.
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Additional information – including “Health Reform Revisited” the special May/June 2008 issue of Health Affairs, The Policy Journal of the Health Sphere – is available online at www.HealthAffairs.org.
