EDITORIAL: Editorial: Health care overhaul within reach as bipartisan dissatisfaction grows

San Diego Union-Tribune (CA)

May 17-- May 17--Gov. Gavin Newsom is due in San Diego on Saturday as part of his "California for All" health care road show. Newsom hopes to build support for his proposed state law requiring every adult resident to have health insurance. That requirement was part of the Affordable Care Act until Congress repealed it. But Newsom is also using his tour to warn Democratic presidential candidates touting "Medicare for All" of the need "to convince people outside of your ideological spectrum ... outside of your base" of the need for far-reaching health reforms.

He's right. Democrats eager to use massive amounts of other people's money for grand schemes to expand government's role in health care can't make major changes without a broad coalition. And the opportunity to do so looks much more promising than a decade ago, when President Barack Obama and Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act almost entirely with Democratic votes. Many believe Republicans opposed it because they opposed everything Obama. But a strong case can be made that the GOP was responding to the millions of Americans who were satisfied with their existing health care. Not long after the ACA passed, voters returned control of the House to Republicans.

Now, however, such contentment is fading fast. A Gallup poll released last month showed more than 3 in 4 American adults think they pay more for health care than the care they get is worth, and that 45% worry they could be bankrupted by a health crisis.

This broad anxiety is no surprise. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that over the past 12 years, "annual deductibles in job-based health plans have nearly quadrupled and now average more than $1,300." Though it is partly government subsidized, Obamacare is often no bargain. The average premium nationally of an ACA family policy is up by more than 75 percent since 2014. In some states, premiums are as big a financial burden as housing.

This is not a picture that either side of the 2009-10 fight over health reform should like. And for one profound reason, it is not a picture that anyone should fight to salvage: Even as conservatives rail against socialized medicine, they don't grasp that America effectively has socialized medicine for much of its population -- a very costly version. A 2015 study of health care in 13 First World nations by the Commonwealth Fund found that the U.S. spends more public funds per capita on health care than 10 of the other 12 nations even though it "was the only country studied that did not have a universal health care system." But since the U.S. spends so much, its health outcomes must be better, right? Nope. The U.S. had the lowest life expectancy and the highest infant mortality rate of the 13 nations that were studied.

Newsom has acknowledged California probably can't broadly expand access to health care without the federal government handing over the funds it would otherwise spend on state residents' health care, which is highly unlikely. So if he wants to lead on this issue, it's time for a national focus -- because bipartisan national health reform has a real chance. A health care system that borrows from what's worked in other wealthy nations -- and achieves better outcomes at lower costs -- is within reach.