By Peter Whoriskey
The Philadelphia Tribune
https://www.phillytrib.com/
Yes, Americans are worried about their bills for groceries, housing and utilities. But their biggest pocketbook anxiety arises from the cost of health care, according to a new poll, and their rising concern is likely to affect this year’s midterm elections.
Voters say that the issue will alter their election choices, with about three-quarters indicating that health care costs will affect their choices in November, according to the poll released Thursday by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy organization.
While voters often cite the economy as the most important factor in their election choices, the cost of health care has become far more prominent this year, KFF pollster Ashley Kirzinger said.
“Health care is normally thought of as a second-tier issue, but this year it seems that health care affordability is going to move voters,” Kirzinger said. “The country is looking for someone to take on health care costs.”
The prolonged debate in Congress over whether to extend the expanded Affordable Care Act subsidies – which led to a 43-day government shutdown – jump-started the debate over health care costs.
While the end of the subsidies raised costs for millions of ACA enrollees, many millions more Americans receive their health care through their employer. They are facing higher costs, too.
Over the past five years, the price of health coverage for an employee’s family has risen 26 percent, to $27,000 annually, according to a different KFF survey. The burden of paying for those policies is shared – the employer picks up 75 percent of the cost on average, or about $20,000, and the employee pays 25 percent, or about $7,000. Employees are also paying more out of pocket to reach deductible limits.
“I think it tells you something about where we are – even people with insurance are worried,” said Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a medical ethicist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has worked with the Obama and Biden administrations. The cost “makes people think twice about whether to get an ambulance or even just go to the doctor. This is a terrible place for the country to be.”
Ideas for fundamentally changing American health care are needed, he said, and at this point, the public might even welcome them.
“I think that the dissatisfaction is so pervasive and deep that people are more open to comprehensive reform,” he said.
Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute and an influential conservative in the field, testified before the Senate Finance Committee in November.
“Health care costs are crushing families and leading to massive federal deficits,” he said in a statement for this article. Blase called for eradicating “government subsidies and regulations that reward inefficient incumbent providers and hospital systems and protect them from competition.”
According to the KFF poll, most Americans think that the health care affordability problem will get worse: A majority (56 percent) of adults said they expect their family’s health care costs to become less affordable in the next year.
About 32 percent of Americans said they were “very worried” about health care bills. By comparison, only 24 percent said they were “very worried” about the affordability of food and groceries; 23 percent considered themselves “very worried” about the rent or mortgage.
When it comes to whom voters trust on the issue of health care, the poll said, Democrats have a 13-point advantage over Republicans. Most of the public said Congress, led by Republicans, did the “wrong thing” by refusing to extend the ACA subsidies.
The one exception to the Democratic lead on health issues is prescription drug prices, which President Donald Trump has focused on in his second term. On that issue, similar shares of voters say they trust the Democratic and Republican parties.
At the same time, there is substantial skepticism that either side will address the issues.
“Notably, on every health care issue asked about, at least a quarter of voters say they trust neither party to do a better job,” the pollsters wrote.
