Released: October 16, 2006

Prescription for health care change

Source: By Julie Appleby, USA Today

Universal health insurance — the idea that every resident would have medical coverage from birth to death — has been labeled everything from a communist plot to the only thing that will solve America’s growing problem of the uninsured.

Presidents from Harry Truman to Richard Nixon and, most recently, Bill Clinton, have proposed various plans for universal coverage, but all have been defeated.

Still, Americans consistently tell pollsters they embrace such an idea.

“We have always seen strong support for the goal of universal coverage but never seen consensus on how to get there or a willingness to pay the price,” says Drew Altman, president of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

That division was reflected in a wide-ranging poll of 1,201 Americans’ views on the nation’s health system sponsored by USA TODAY, ABC News and the Kaiser Family Foundation. The nationally representative sample has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

Fifty-six percent say they would prefer universal coverage to the current system, which relies on a mix of voluntary efforts by employers to offer insurance and a mix of government and private insurance options for those who don’t get coverage through work. The latest Census Bureau data estimate 46.6 million are uninsured.

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