A new poll by USA Today reports that Americans' attitudes toward health care seem to be undergoing some fundamental shifts:
- Seventy percent of those polled said it should be legal for US residents to buy prescription medicines outside the US to save money.
- Fifty-four percent said they were dissatisfied with the quality of health care in the US, 10 percentage points higher than just three years ago.
- About 53 percent of those polled said they were concerned about loosing their health insurance in the future, and sixty percent said that they were worried about being able to afford health insurance in the future.
- And 62 percent of those polled said that "they preferred a universal system that would provide coverage to everyone under a government program, as opposed to the current employer-based system."
- KC's View:
-
All of these numbers would seem connected to the labor strife being seen around the country, which are to a great extent connected to businesses' desire to roll back health benefit costs.
The last number - about the desire for a government-sponsored universal system - seems particularly ironic. After all, wasn't that what the Clinton administration couldn’t get passed a decade ago?
