Helaine Olen: Fox News has accidentally revealed the truth about Medicare-for-all support

It was such a surreal moment, it looked almost like a dream. On Monday evening, during the Fox News plenary session with Senator Bernie Sanders, host of ETH Bret Baier, asked audience members how much private health insurance they had. A large majority raised their hand. He then asked how many people would like Medicare-for-all to be adopted. Almost all the same hands got up – remember, it was on Fox News! – with wild acclaims to boot.

The action of Baier violated a major rule of lawyers: never ask a witness at the helm of a question to which you do not know the answer. However, I must point out that it is only in the Fox News bubble that the popularity of Medicare-for-all would surprise anyone – polls regularly reveal that more than half of Americans say they 39, support, including one from last year who found Republicans say that they support Sanders' signature initiative.

As I watched the acclaimed and acclaimed crowd in hand on Fox, I immediately thought of a statistic that landed on my desk earlier on Monday, showing that employer-sponsored health insurance offers less financial protection to low-income Americans than many believe. According to a study of the employer's health insurance market conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Peterson Center on Healthcare, households with incomes corresponding to 200% of poverty – just over $ 50,000 for a family of four – spend an average of 14% of their income on premiums, deductibles and medical expenses – a figure that goes up to 18.5% if a family member is in a health crisis.

The costs of health care and health insurance are putting increasing pressure on all budgets, not just those people living from one paycheck to the other. As reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation, the typical health insurance premium for a family has increased twice as fast as the inflation rate in 2018, after a 55% increase over the previous decade. The average deductible is also included in the four figures, having risen by just over 50% over a five-year period. People find medical services increasingly expensive, even when they are insured: almost a quarter of people on prescription drug prescriptions – including 23% of seniors – say they are having more and more difficulty getting medical care. pay for their medication.

Nevertheless, many health care politicians are failing their policies and more than a few politicians remain convinced that Americans are delighted with the current system. They report that surveys have revealed that people are satisfied with their current plans, without realizing that all conclusions are relative. The stability in the health insurance market is extremely exaggerated: a few years ago, a survey revealed that only 7 out of 10 people with employer insurance in Michigan remained under the same scheme a year later. later. Secondly, dissatisfaction with employers 'health insurance is barely unknown: it is first of all one of the causes of the teachers' strikes and legal actions launched last year in the state. red from West Virginia and in the city of Jersey, New Jersey. Almost everyone is worried about the increase in costs. Even when people are happy with the offer, they may feel trapped, what economists call the job foreclosure: people who have suffered from cancer in their childhood, for example, are often afraid to change jobs because they are afraid of gaps in coverage or higher medical costs.

All this largely explains why some parts of the Medicare industry went on the offensive on Tuesday after Sanders appeared on Fox, trying to scare the American public and subject it to the current status quo, clearly unacceptable. David Wichmann, CEO of UnitedHealth, the country's largest health insurance company, said during a conference call that Medicare plans for all "would certainly jeopardize the relationships people have with their people." doctors, clinicians to practice medicine at their best. "In fact, this is similar to our current reality, in which insurance companies routinely hinder the relationships between doctors and patients, emphasizing the approval of drugs, treatments and even requests for physiotherapy sessions, sometimes refusing them willy-nilly.

Although I suspect more than one person to believe that Medicare-for-all means something more similar to the Plan for American Progress plan called Medicare Extra for All, which would allow people to maintain health insurance based on the Employer if they prefer, I do not think so. Many people think, as reported in a recent interview with the Washington Post, Nancy Pelosi, President of the House of Representatives of California, that this means simple universal coverage. Nor does it mean simply increasing subsidies for the Affordable Care Act regimes. I think that means that people want at least the opportunity to adhere to the plan that works so well for people over 65 years old. Much of the American policy – like, for example, tax cuts – boils down to a variation of "And then me? Why would health care be different?

Helaine Olen is a contributor to Post Opinions and the author of "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry". His work has been published in Slate, The Nation, The New York Times, Atlantic and many other publications. She is on the Advisory Board of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project.