Sacramento Senses All the Symptoms : New poll says voters are near revolt over health crisis

Finally, it would seem Sacramento hears the drumbeat of demand for change of a health-care system that serves no one well and serves millions not at all.

The sudden attentiveness to correcting a long burdensome health- insurance system is no doubt directly linked to public opinion polls that continue to show that while Californians make more of an effort than most Americans to stay healthy, they are sick--sick of a health-care system that is unaffordable and inaccessible to 5 million in this state alone. When so many are uninsured, the potentially back-breaking costs of quality health care become a personal issue for anyone with a relative who is unprotected.

The annual Gallup California Health Care Poll was released this week, and its findings underscored those in an earlier Los Angeles Times poll: that 73% of those surveyed who said society should provide better health care for the poor are willing to pay higher taxes to expand such coverage. Among those who voted last November, 40% disapproved of the governor’s performance on health-care issues, and 52% disapproved of the Legislature’s.

Complete health-care reform would have to occur at the national level; however, the Gallup Poll showed that Californians are increasingly looking to the state, not the federal government, for assistance in providing health care for those who cannot afford it.

So now the Legislature, with its keen instinct for sensing ballot-box issues, is considering a variety of proposals to reform the health-insurance system, including one modeled after the government-run Canadian system or another that would require most, or all, employers to provide insurance. When all is said and done, a Canadian model will likely compete with some version of an employer-based plan.

But one thing is certain: The powerful lobbies representing doctors, hospitals, large and small business want to see this worked out in the statehouse. Because absent a legislative remedy, a grass-roots health-care initiative looms certain, akin to the take-no-prisoners approach of the car insurance measure, Proposition 103, passed in 1988. The car-insurance crisis may be still unresolved, but the medical industry can’t forget that its brethren in the insurance business spent a record $60 million vainly fighting reform initiatives. “If we get a Proposition 103-type initiative for health care,” worries one medical industry partisan, “it will make the insurance fight look like a Mary Poppins tea.”

So it would. Therein lies the great incentive for legislators, who depend both on voter support and special-interest contributions, to come up with reasoned and effective proposals to treat, if not cure, the health care-system that’s ailing us.

Health Care

Perception of California Legislature’s performance on health-care issues.

Voters Approve: 22% Disapprove: 52% Don’t know: 25%

Nonvoters Approve: 27% Disapprove: 43% Don’t know: 30% Source: The Gallup Organization