Nearly one-quarter of Americans say the country’s health care system is in crisis, with 29 percent citing high costs as the most urgent problem with national health, according to a new Gallup poll released Monday.
Concerns about cost and access to health care have long dominated Gallup’s survey studying health problems facing the country. But the share of Americans who view cost as the most pressing problem in health, as well as the 23 percent of respondents who said the system is in a “state of crisis,” are among the highest readings Gallup has recorded in its decades of polling.
Gallup surveyed about 1,300 adults from Nov. 3 to 25. Its poll has a margin of error of plus or minus three percentage points.
The negative perception spans party lines. Eighty-one percent of Democrats and 64 percent of Republicans said the system is in crisis or has “major problems.”
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And a growing proportion of survey respondents are more concerned about the cost of health care rather than access to it.
With the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in place since 2010, “it’s not that they don’t have the plans,” said Lydia Saad, director of U.S. social research at Gallup. “They can’t afford the plans.”
Disagreements over whether to extend Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies dominated Congress this fall, helping trigger the longest federal government shutdown in history. After the GOP-controlled Senate blocked a Democratic bill Thursday to extend the subsidies, it is almost certain they will expire at the end of the year.
That would more than double the average premium, according to estimates from the health care research nonprofit KFF. The Senate also blocked a Republican bill that would grant many Americans up to $1,500 in tax-free accounts to spend on health care.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has said Republicans in his chamber would draft and vote on their own health care proposal next week but will not extend the Affordable Care Act subsidies.
Worries about cost are not only bipartisan, according to the new poll; they have also risen in both parties since Gallup’s survey last year, Saad said. The increase was 12 percentage points among Democrats and 10 points among Republicans, according to Saad, while the share of independents who listed health care costs as their most urgent concern didn’t change.
But historically, perception of the country’s health care system has varied depending on which political party holds power, Saad said. The increase in the share of Americans who believe the system is in crisis was driven by Democrats this year, Saad said, with 34 percent agreeing with that characterization, compared to 13 percent last year.
“That’s not surprising, given now [President Donald] Trump is in office. And again, the whole shutdown was over the funding of ACA subsidies and the future of the ACA,” Saad said. “So I think that was probably weighing heavily on Democrats’ minds.”
Like prior years, respondents tended to view the general cost of American health care far worse than the costs they personally incurred. Sixteen percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the total cost of U.S. health care, while 57 percent said they were satisfied with the cost they paid personally, the survey found. Saad said this divide, which has lingered for years, is likely driven by concerns over what Americans are hearing about health care in the news.
Many households fear that unexpected medical crises could bring exorbitant bills that break their budgets, “even if they’re not having trouble paying for it today,” said Liz Hamel, vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at KFF.
The group’s May survey on health care costs and economic anxieties found that a little over one–third of respondents said they had skipped or postponed getting health care that they needed because of the cost, and 1 in 5 people reported that their health got worse as a result.
Those costs can carry lasting financial consequences – piled-up medical bills have forced people to go into debt, dip into their savings or forgo paying for other expenses, Hamel added.
“Health care is a pocketbook issue for people,” she said.