Matthew Yglesias has some interesting graphics up which show that Americans who actually have public health care plans (aka Medicare and Medicaid) have higher levels of satisfaction with them than do Americans who are privately insured.
These results mirror surveys in countries that offer universal health care systems (i.e., every industrialized country except the United States), as seen in this post by Ezra Klein (via Matthew). When people in countries with fully nationalized health care systems are asked whether they believe the health care systems in their countries “need to be completely rebuilt,” and then those results are compared with Americans’ answer to the same question, a significantly higher percentage say yes in the United States than in six other countries (Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom). As Ezra put it, “Americans Fear Canada’s Health-Care System, But Not as Much as Canadians Fear America’s.”
Back to Matthew, who reproduces Ezra’s graphic and writes:
As you can see here, there are a variety of appealing models. People like Canada’s Medicare for All approach, just as people here like Medicare. What the Dutch do is quite different, is somewhat more appealing to the wonk’s sensibility, and is also quite popular. The UK approach which is, again, totally different and really does feature the dread “rationing” is also really popular. Nothing can quite beat the American system for producing widespread dissatisfaction.
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