By Mike Shields, KHI News Service, June 6, 2008
TOPEKA, June 6 — Focus-group studies involving participants in Kansas, Ohio, and Mississippi have produced evidence that a majority of Kansans might support a state-run health insurance plan and new taxes to fund it, if the program guaranteed basic coverage for all.
The studies also showed that 93 percent of the Kansas participants believed the U.S. health care system was in crisis or had major problems; though 75 percent said the quality of care in their own community was excellent or good.
The study results were shared today with a group of about 60 people who gathered at the downtown Ramada Inn in Topeka. Those attending included hospital administrators, insurance company employees, foundation officials, health agency bureaucrats, social service advocates, small business owners and others.
The Kansas findings resulted from a series of day-long meetings held in March in Garden City, Pittsburg and Overland Park. About 30 people participated in each session, which organizers described as “ChoiceDialogues,” different from conventional focus groups or polls because they lasted longer and provided four reform scenarios for consideration with detailed information about each. Participants’ views were recorded after they had been shaped by discussion with one another.
According to Viewpoint Learning, Inc. the firm that conducted the studies: “ChoiceDialogues are designed to explore how and why people’s minds change as they learn. While little or no learning on the part of the participants occurs in the course of conducting a poll or focus group, ChoiceDialogues are characterized by a huge amount of learning.”
Those at today’s meeting were shown a DVD made from video recordings of comments by various participants in the focus groups or dialogues.
Each focus group participant was paid $150 for joining in the eight-hour sessions managed by Viewpoint Learning, whose work on the multi-state project was underwritten by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The project’s goal was to explore public views on health care reform.
Viewpoint Vice President Heidi Gantwerk said Kansas, Ohio and Mississippi were chosen because they were states “not so far along” in health reform legislation and “not so big” that it would be difficult to gauge public perceptions.
Viewpoint did its Kansas work in collaboration with the Kansas Health Consumer Coalition and the Kansas Health Institute, which contributed by inviting those who attended today’s meeting and an initial meeting in which the four reform scenarios discussed in the focus groups were defined.
The four scenarios were:
“At the end of the day, 79 percent of Kansas participants supported switching to a publicly-run health insurance program paid for by taxes,” Gantwerk said. “Only 21 percent supported staying with an employer-based system. They really came to see that wasn’t the system for 10 years down the road.”
Gantwerk said the studies didn’t sample enough Kansans to draw solid conclusions about how much support a state health system might have among all Kansans, but that they showed there is likely more support for that type of reform than elected officials and others probably think there is.
She said the Kansas participants indicated any state-run program would have to guarantee that choice of care providers would be preserved in order to be acceptable.
The study also showed that 93 percent of the Kansas participants supported capping insurance company profits and that 61 percent strongly supported that idea.
Corrie Edwards, executive director of the Kansas Health Consumer Coalition, said the next step in the project would be deployment of 22 local facilitators who will organize community meetings to raise awareness about health issues.
-Mike Shields is a staff writer for KHI News Service, which specializes in coverage of health issues facing Kansans. He can be reached at mshields@khi.org or at 785-233-5443, ext. 123.