Americans Are Surprisingly Clear-Eyed About American Health Care


Austin Frakt draws my attention to a new Gallup poll with this tweet: “Consistent with my hypothesis that people think their care is good/efficient, others is bad/wasteful.” Here’s the poll:

I’d draw a different conclusion. For starters, keep in mind that public sentiment on this question hasn’t changed much over the past decade. There are some ups and downs in recent years about the quality of national health care coverage, possibly based on the ups and downs of Obamacare, but it mostly looks like noise to me.

More importantly, though, I don’t interpret this as a belief that coverage for other people is either bad or wasteful. I interpret it as a surprisingly accurate assessment of U.S. health care. About two-thirds of Americans have either Medicare or company-provided health care (or something similar), and they correctly tell Gallup that their own personal coverage is pretty good. And it is! At the same time, most people also think that overall health care coverage in America is pretty mediocre, and that’s true too. How can you call national coverage good or excellent when 50 million people are uninsured and have crappy access to medical care?

If Gallup had called me, this is precisely the response I would have given them. My own personal coverage is quite good. Thanks, MoJo! However, I’d also say that overall coverage in the U.S. is terrible. Obamacare will, perhaps, upgrade that to merely unsatisfactory, but that’s about it.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate