By Tim Gaynor Tim Gaynor – Wed Oct 28, 3:55 pm ET
PHOENIX (Reuters) – Including a government-run insurance option in a U.S. healthcare bill has split lawmakers in the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress, but support for it remains broad on the streets of U.S. cities, voters and pollsters say.

On Monday, Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid included a "public" option in the Senate's bill as the best way to lower costs and create competition.

"When you have no competition, the prices keep going up and up ... the public option is going to force them to change, to bring down their prices -- hopefully," said Phoenix mobile home salesman Bill Zaffer, 61, who backed the measure.

Opponents argue that a public option would hurt competition because the government program would have a cost advantage by virtue of a huge member base, but supporters of the public option say there is no real competition without it.

Inclusion of a public option has become one of the most contentious issues in the debate on healthcare reform -- President Barack Obama's top domestic priority, which seeks to cut costs, improve care and regulate insurers.

Democrats said Reid was still short of the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles and pass a bill with a public option. Republicans are against the measure, which they say amounts to a government takeover of healthcare which would hurt the private insurance industry.

But several polls in recent weeks show support for the option running at between 50 and 61 percent among Americans. Among backers is yoga instructor Suzanne Brownlow, from Atlanta.

"It's almost impossible to get insurance. A public option would present me with an opportunity," said Brownlow, 48, who has repeatedly been denied coverage since having a seizure eight years ago, and has been without coverage for year.

In Los Angeles, meanwhile, attorney Gary Minevich, 33, who is among some 46 million people in the United States without coverage, said he supported "nationalized" health care.

"I haven't had health care in like seven years and I think that if he had passed this a long time ago I'd have been able to see a doctor," he said.

But Broc Tooher, 20, was among a minority of Americans who dislike a government-run insurance option, which he felt would impose uniformity.

"Insurance should be provided on what you want, and not just all be the same," said Tooher, an operating room assistant in Scottsdale, Ariz. "I think it's a bad idea."

GUT RESPONSE

A USA Today/Gallup poll released last week found 50 percent backed a public option and 46 percent opposed it, while a CNN poll found 61 percent supported an insurance option administered by the government and 38 percent opposed.

While the numbers vary, researchers said they are representative of backing for a government insurance option among Americans. Underlying the support are such factors as difficulty obtaining coverage and the cost of medical care.

"You're essentially getting a gut level response to what is a very complex issue, but I think it represents the public view," said Carroll Doherty of the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press.

"You see it across a lot of polls with different wording, that there is support for this approach."

Nevertheless, one Pew poll last month found that 67 percent of respondents found the healthcare debate difficult to understand -- a complaint common among Americans struggling to make sense of the four lengthy, jargon-ridden versions of healthcare legislation currently in Congress.

"I definitely need more information and I need to have it in a form we can understand," said Theresa Frombes, a 51-year-old occupational therapist from Illinois, who was "for some (of the bill) but not all of it."

In Phoenix, part-time potter Tim Denne, meanwhile, said he had difficulty reaching an informed view on the healthcare legislation, the Senate version of which alone runs to more than 1,500 pages.

"You could get a doctorate in just studying that bill ... it's that thick," he said indicating the breadth of a phone book with his thumb and index finger as he stood at a filling station.

"People can say whether they support it or not, but they can't really be in a firm or valid opinion," he added.

(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Carey Gillam in Kansas City; editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Nov 2010 will mark the end of more of the senate republicans.

122 Americans die every single day because they do not have health benefits.

Cotter, what is your source for this infomation? I have heard this reported, too, and have googled, but couldn't find any statistical basis for it.

Physicians: 45,000 Americans Die Each Year for Lack of Health Insurance
September 19th, 2009 · 6 Comments · Politics, Social and Economic Justice, Uncategorized, poverty

Talk about death panels! Physicians for a National Health Program is calling attention to a just releases–and very shocking–Harvard study that found…

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The new study, “Health Insurance and Mortality in U.S. Adults,” appears in today’s online edition of the American Journal of Public Health.

The Harvard-based researchers found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

In an e-mail blast, the doctors group calls for President Obama to “start from scratch”: to ditch the unpopular, badly thought out, solves-nothing proposals floating through Congress and bring the US into alignment with the rest of the developed world: a single-payer health care plan.

And the group’s leader, Steffie Woolhandler, M.D., M.P.H. of Harvard University, gave a great interview on this on Democracy Now.

Retired Senator (and former presidential candidate) George McGovern notes in a recent op-ed that all it would take is a one sentence law, extending Medicare coverage to all Americans.

I think all these folks are correct. I’ve been saying for months that the time for single-payer (something I started supporting in 1979, when I was a community organizer for the Gray Panthers and this was their main plank) is NOW.

If you’re in the US, tell your Senators and Congressional representative. And tell your state government to push for it.

She was a Nurse and didnt get her own child Health Insurance?

I wonder how many Bankruptcies are caused by Job Loss? Just sayin...

The study was released by Physicians for a National Health Care Program...looks like the Doctors who did the study are members of PHNP.

Harvard Study: 45,000 Uninsured Die Every Year

New America Media, News Report, Paul Kleyman, Posted: Sep 18, 2009

Having no health insurance means an early death to almost 45,000 people in the United States annually – almost two-and-a-half times the number previously estimated -– according to a study published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health.

The research team used the latest figures from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) to update previous calculations based on 20-year-old data. They tracked 9,004 uninsured individuals ages 17-64.

The study included special “oversamples” of African Americans and Mexicans -– who were found to die at about the same rate as their white counterparts.

“Although blacks and Hispanics are more likely to end up uninsured, racial differences in the percentages of deaths was not statistically significant,” lead author Dr. Andrew Wilper said in an interview.

In essence, he said, once people are uninsured “they are in the same boat” –- a boat in which 3 percent will succumb each year from lack of care.

Researchers at Harvard University found that deaths by lack of health insurance are “more than those caused by kidney disease” (nearly 43,000 a year). The research team also included what they called a more “conservative” estimate of about 35,000 deaths annually, still double past findings.

Wilper, who recently joined the medical staff at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Boise, Idaho, said his research group analyzed data from NCHS’s Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. This federal survey included detailed interviews and physical examinations of participating Americans.

The study’s authors cite a long list of previous research showing why lack of insurance elevates health risks for people. Past studies have documented such effects of having no insurance as rising hypertension, poor management of chronic illness, and reduced likelihood of receiving preventative and primary care, leading often to increased visits to emergency rooms.

Other studies have demonstrated that uninsured people get healthier when they turn 65 and go on Medicare. That’s because when they join the government system, these seniors receive expensive health treatments for long-neglected medical conditions.

Wilper and his colleagues conclude current public health alternatives for the uninsured, such as going to community health centers, “do not provide the protection of private health insurance.”

They add, “Despite widespread acknowledgment that enacting universal coverage would be life saving, doing so remains politically thorny.”

The study concludes that health professions should “advocate for universal coverage.” Wilper said the reports authors expect to be criticized for their activist stand, but argued their political opinion is based on solid scientific research, including major reports by the Institute of Medicine.

“We had no control over the timing of publication,” Wilper said. “We began this process two years go.”

this "Study" is suspect....One study done by Pro-UHC group really doesn't prove anything...

but when you post a study to support your position and the study is done by people who support your position then the results are suspect

Physicians for a National Health Program is calling attention to a just released–and very shocking–Harvard study that found…

Remember you heard it here. The current bill will never pass.

But they tried with good intentions. That's all that really matters.

Nope, look at the names of the people who co-authored the study they are members of PHNP...If Harvard did the study and the people who were in charge of the Study were not advocates for Universal Health Care but were people who had no interests in the outcome the study would be credible as it is it is the results are not Credible...

I would settle for real reform....not a BS plan set in place to use as a catalyst for an eventual total Government takeover of the Health Care System

I would settle for real reform....not a BS plan set in place to use as a catalyst for an eventual total Government takeover of the Health Care System

… look at the names of the people who co-authored the study they are members of PHNP...If Harvard did the study and the people who were in charge of the Study were not advocates for Universal Health Care but were people who had no interests in the outcome the study would be credible as it is it is the results are not Credible...

New study finds 45,000 deaths annually linked to lack of health coverage

Uninsured, working-age Americans have 40 percent higher death risk than privately insured counterparts

September 17, 2009

David Cecere
Cambridge Health Alliance

Nearly 45,000 annual deaths are associated with lack of health insurance, according to a new study published online today by the American Journal of Public Health. That figure is about two and a half times higher than an estimate from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) in 2002.

The study, conducted at Harvard Medical School and Cambridge Health Alliance, found that uninsured, working-age Americans have a 40 percent higher risk of death than their privately insured counterparts, up from a 25 percent excess death rate found in 1993.

“The uninsured have a higher risk of death when compared to the privately insured, even after taking into account socioeconomics, health behaviors, and baseline health,” said lead author Andrew Wilper, M.D., who currently teaches at the University of Washington School of Medicine. “We doctors have many new ways to prevent deaths from hypertension, diabetes, and heart disease — but only if patients can get into our offices and afford their medications.”

The study, which analyzed data from national surveys carried out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), assessed death rates after taking into account education, income, and many other factors, including smoking, drinking, and obesity. It estimated that lack of health insurance causes 44,789 excess deaths annually.

Previous estimates from the IOM and others had put that figure near 18,000. The methods used in the current study were similar to those employed by the IOM in 2002, which in turn were based on a pioneering 1993 study of health insurance and mortality.

Deaths associated with lack of health insurance now exceed those caused by many common killers such as kidney disease. An increase in the number of uninsured and an eroding medical safety net for the disadvantaged likely explain the substantial increase in the number of deaths, as the uninsured are more likely to go without needed care. Another factor contributing to the widening gap in the risk of death between those who have insurance and those who do not is the improved quality of care for those who can get it.

The researchers analyzed U.S. adults under age 65 who participated in the annual National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES) between 1986 and 1994. Respondents first answered detailed questions about their socioeconomic status and health and were then examined by physicians. The CDC tracked study participants to see who died by 2000.

The study found a 40 percent increased risk of death among the uninsured. As expected, death rates were also higher for males (37 percent increase), current or former smokers (102 percent and 42 percent increases), people who said that their health was fair or poor (126 percent increase), and those who examining physicians said were in fair or poor health (222 percent increase).

Steffie Woolhandler, study co-author, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a primary care physician at Cambridge Health Alliance, noted: “Historically, every other developed nation has achieved universal health care through some form of nonprofit national health insurance. Our failure to do so means that all Americans pay higher health care costs, and 45,000 pay with their lives.”

“The Institute of Medicine, using older studies, estimated that one American dies every 30 minutes from lack of health insurance,” remarked David Himmelstein, study co-author, associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, and a primary care physician at Cambridge Health Alliance. “Even this grim figure is an underestimate — now one dies every 12 minutes.”

Other authors include Karen E. Lasser, Danny McCormick, David H. Bor, and David U. Himmelstein. The study was supported by a National Service Research Award.

I just found out that the State " Opt Out" option is a smoke screen. States will be able to Opt Out of the plan BUT they still have to pay the govt the SAME amount as if they were IN the plan.

Just like Medicaid, a state can opt out. Arizona did not join the Medicaid program until 1982...

Why don't the Red States drop out of Medicaid?