New Fox News news article: As Obama Pushes National Health Care, Most Americans Already Happy With Coverage

My new Fox News news article starts this way:

As the Obama administration pushes for a national health care plan, studies show that most Americans are overwhelmingly happy with their own health care -- but they are dissatisfied with the country's overall system, because most Americans who have insurance believe that those who don't have it are not receiving care.

Those same studies, however, show that a surprisingly large 70 percent of the estimated 46 million Americans who don't have insurance say they do, in fact, receive health care, and that a vast majority of them are satisfied with it.

A survey conducted jointly by the Kaiser Family Foundation, ABC News and USA Today, released in October 2006, found that 89 percent of Americans were satisfied with their own personal medical care, but only 44 percent were satisfied with the overall quality of the American medical system. The survey is the only recent poll for which data is publicly available that allows for a comparison of the satisfaction of insured and uninsured Americans. (The data from a just-completed New York Times/CBS poll won't be publicly available for several months; the results that have been reported so far don't make the comparisons discussed in this article.)

Those with recent serious health problems, possibly the people with the best knowledge of how health care is working, were generally the most satisfied. Ninety-three percent of insured Americans who had recently suffered a serious illness were satisfied with their health care. So were 95 percent of those who suffered from chronic illness. . . .

"If the insured come to believe that the uninsured are not that dissatisfied with their health care, it is extremely important. It could throw a real wild card into the whole health care debate," Jack Calfee, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told FOXNews.com. . . . . .

UPDATE: A new Washington Post/ABC News poll has virtually the same results as the basic estimates here.

15 a. a. The overall health care system in this country

------------- Satisfied ------- ------- Dissatisfied ---- No
. . . . . . . NET . . . Very . . . Somewhat . NET . Somewhat . Very . opinion

All . . . . . 43 . . . . 10 . . . . . . 32 . . . . . 57 . . . . . 26 . . . . . 31 . . . . . 1
All Cov . .45 . . . . 11 . . . . . . 34 . . . . . 54 . . . . . 28 . . . . . 26 . . . . . 1



15 b. The quality of the health care you receive

------------- Satisfied ------- ------- Dissatisfied ---- No
. . . . . . . NET . . . Very . . . Somewhat . NET . Somewhat . Very . opinion
All . . . . . 83 . . . . 49 . . . . . 34 . . . . . 16 . . . . . 9 . . . . . 7 . . . . . 1
All Cov. . 88 . . . . 53 . . . . . 35 . . . . . 12 . . . . . 7 . . . . . 4 . . . . . *