Los Angeles Business Journal

There’s no doubt that businesses are fed up with rapidly escalating health care premiums, but so much so that they are willing to swallow state-sponsored universal health care?

That’s the spin the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights — the Santa Monica-based group that engineered insurance industry reform — is putting on a survey it conducted of businesses as part of an effort to reform the health care system.

But a closer look at the numbers casts doubt that there’s been such a change of heart.

A survey of 127 business executives found they think the quality of health care is dropping even as costs and HMO bureaucracy rise.

The foundation notes that as a solution, 70 percent would support a universal coverage system that mandates business participation, with payments linked to size.

But the question presupposes a guarantee that such a system would lower costs. Without that guarantee, support drops to 32 percent with 63 percent in opposition, as would be expected.