Health Law Passes, Health Confidence Declines
Reuters is out this morning with an article summarizing their latest findings about Americans’ health care confidence. The Thompson Reuters health care sentiment index – based on a monthly survey of several thousand American households – finds that “for the first time, consumer responses on every question related to both retrospective and prospective confidence in their ability to access, use, and pay for health care were statistically worse” than the December 2009 poll. Overall confidence is down five percent since December, as Congress was working its way towards passing health care bills in both chambers.
The survey represents the second in as many weeks that quantified the loss in health care confidence experienced by many Americans; last week’s Robert Wood Johnson survey found that Americans’ consumer confidence in health care has dipped since the law passed. And even some Democrats are starting to admit that their health law has not lived up to its initial billing. In the Reuters piece, Third Way’s David Kendall conceded that Americans feel let down: “The health care debate raised people’s expectations and there is now disappointment as a result that the problem isn’t solved.”
Yet the Administration has ignored such sentiments, apparently unaware of – or uninterested in – the concerns expressed by millions of Americans about the health law. This weekend Secretary Sebelius bragged about its “transformational” impact, and claimed that “the more people understand this bill, the more they’re going to like it.”
At a time when Democrats’ closest liberal allies have conducted polls indicating the public is not convinced by many of the White House’s claims regarding the health law, Secretary Sebelius and the Administration continue to plow ahead in a sales campaign to promote the unpopular measure. After defying the will of voters once to pass the law, when will the Administration finally listen to the American people who are crying out for something different – true health reforms that (unlike the unpopular law) they can actually believe in?