Posted on 07/14/2002 2:32:00 AM PDT by sarcasm
Belying the state's anti-tax, individualistic image, a majority of Texans favor a publicly funded national health-care plan in which all Americans would receive their insurance from a single government source, according to a University of Houston poll.
In results poll takers attributed to the state's growing Hispanic population, 52 percent of Texans favor such a plan. Only 40 percent of people nationally favor such a plan.
"I wouldn't have expected that outcome in a conservative state known for a fend-for-yourself, don't-rely-on-government attitude," said Richard Murray, director of UH's Center for Public Policy, who coordinated the survey. "I think it's rooted in an increasing knowledge of just how severe insurance problems are in Texas, particularly among Hispanics, who are less likely to have insurance."
Hispanics, 64 percent of whom supported a national health-care plan, reported the greatest amount of difficulties with health-care issues. The problems included paying bills, getting services, securing health insurance, getting prescriptions filled and general dissatisfaction with the quality of health-care service.
The survey found that 57 percent of the state's Hispanic population has health insurance, compared with 88 percent of Anglos and 77 percent of blacks. Overall, Texas' health-care insurance rate is 77 percent, lagging behind the national average of 82 percent.
Murray said he asked about a national health-care plan, even though the idea's defeat during the Clinton administration seemed to doom it for the foreseeable future, because it was included in a recent national survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, National Public Radio and Harvard University. That survey, which found discontent with the state of the U.S. health-care system, supplied the national numbers.
State Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, vice-chairman of the Texas House Committee on Public Health, said he, too, was surprised that 52 percent of polled respondents favored a national health-care plan and expressed hope that it meant that "in their guts, Texans understand the problems of the uninsured."
Coleman said he hoped the results would send a message to Gov. Rick Perry about where Texans stand and embolden the 2003 Texas Legislature to expand health coverage to more people. In 2001, Perry vetoed a bill to expand Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program. Perry could not be reached for comment Saturday.
Murray said he isn't aware of any previous poll asking Texans what they think of a national health-care plan financed by taxpayers. In his poll, 43 percent of respondents opposed such a plan, and 5 percent gave no answer. Forty-nine percent of Anglos and 54 percent of blacks favored such a plan.
In 2000, a national study found that 59 percent of immigrant families living in Houston had no health insurance, by far the highest rate of any U.S. city.
The UH poll found a majority of Texans think government politics has a negative effect on health care, and more said health care's quality has gotten worse over the past two years than said it stayed the same or improved. Holding down the cost of care and providing coverage for people without insurance were the most popular answers in response to what should be the 2003 Legislature's health-care priorities.
Strong majorities said they favored requiring businesses to offer private insurance for their employees; income tax deductions, tax credits or financial assistance to help uninsured Americans purchase private insurance; expanding programs such as Medicaid and CHIP; and expanding neighborhood clinics.
Mary Ann Bobinski, director of the UH Law Center's Health Law and Policy Institute, said the problems of the uninsured will intensify as the Hispanic population continues to grow. She noted that studies show that the uninsured are more likely to go without health care, suffer from untreated illnesses and ultimately impose significant costs on the health-care safety net.
Murray said the survey, the UH Center for Public Policy's first, will be done every year to track data. Conducted June 20-29, it surveyed 1,007 Texas adults in a random telephone sample. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
And of course, the government will solve all these problems.
And when "hillary care" is finally passed, the supply of medical services will automatically increase to fill the demands of illegal aliens.
The relentless, unending march to socialism, (which will destroy America), continues.
IMO the sampling method is flawed and the data reported is incomplete. It appears that this was limited to households that are unable to afford call screening equipment, thus skewing the sample toward a lower socio-economic demographic.
The specific questions asked was not given. The results suggest some sort of push poll.
It doesn't state what language the poll was given.
It doesn't state the citizenship status of those polled.
I'd like to see a breakdown along these lines also.
Until proven that a poll reflects the opinions of legal, tax paying, achievers, I'll reject it out of hand as liberal agitprop.
This does not represent the majority opinion of most Texans I know.
The focus on insurance is all wrong but not surprising. As long as the medical community (i.e. doctors) can tightly restrict the number of med school students and med schools for that matter we will continue to have a small body of overpaid doctors. The med schools intentionally stack the rosters with foreign students knowing that many will leave the US and not dilute the field.
Break that stranglehold and the free enterprise system will fix the crisis very quickly.
The Constitution is to protect us against such 'legal blunder'. If there is no protection, then we will have the legal citizens not being able to afford insurance, yet paying for insurance for illegal aliens.
This sounds like economic slavery to me.
Texans, huh? Reminds me of a couple of quotes by a heroic character in a movie I like
"I never met a Texan I couldn't shade."
If I ever meet a Texan who hasn't drunk water from a hoofprint I think I'll shake his hand or buy him a Daniel Webster ceegar."
In a way this doesn't suprise me. To many times I have heard people say "Well if they can get it why can't I"?
The purpose of the welfare state was to create a dependency on government thus enslavement. It seem to be working pretty well!!
RETCH!
PUKE!
DRY HEAVE!
The Houston Chronicle is a komunist rag, unfit to line the bottom of a bird cage.
Socialism is the sacrament of the brain-dead.
Wow. Second time this month I've seen this. The cabal of doctors restricting the numbers of new docs.
The numbers of new docs is restricted by the high cost of the infrastructure needed to educate them. Hillary managed to influence the closings of a few medical schools, over the screams of the academic docs.
The US does not educate foreign docs only to send them back overseas, because the docs here prefer to stay here. What the US (and the certification boards) DO is to certify a large number of foreign-educated physicians. Or haven't you noticed that in your local hospital. The US gets the benefit of other countries having to subsidise the high ed costs of med school...thanks to the willingness of medical cert boards. There is no conspiracy here.
Educating a doctor is much more costly than educating a lawyer. For a law school, all you need are classrooms, a library, and a few brokendown rainmakers. That's why we have such a delightful wealth of lawyers. For a med school, you have to have labs, libraries, highly compensated doc teachers, expensive cadavers for Gross Anatomy (morticians and pathologists maintain them)...this is why there are not enough docs. Plus, now that half of the med school students are women, you can count on some of them marrying their fellow doctors and never practicing medicine at all, or taking on less demanding practices.
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