Healthcare costs now top financial fear for U.S. families

Food prices, utility costs and monthly rent or mortgage payments traditionally top the list of bills that Americans can’t ignore. 

Until now.

More Americans say the rocketing costs of healthcare for themselves and their families are their top financial concerns, according to a new poll.

Two-thirds of the public (66%) say they worry about being able to afford healthcare, ranking higher than utilities, food and groceries, housing, and gas.

And they’re so worried that consumers say healthcare costs will influence their votes during this year’s midterm elections.

This is unlike in years past when traditional kitchen table economic concerns -- remember the high price of eggs? -- had a ripple effect in the ballot box.

“I think it tells you something about where we are — even people with insurance are worried,” Ezekiel J. Emanuel, a medical ethicist and professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told The Washington Post.

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.”

KFF poll measures healthcare concerns

The cost of healthcare, including paying for health insurance and out-of-pocket expenses, tops the list of the public’s economic anxieties, rising well above other necessities.

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According to the poll released Jan. 29 by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy organization, a third (32%) of those surveyed that they are “very worried” about their ability to afford healthcare for them and their families – more than say the same about affording:

• Food and groceries (24%)
• Rent or mortgage (23%)
• Monthly utility bills (22%)
• Gasoline and other transportation costs (17%)

Americans expect healthcare costs to increase

According to the KFF poll, most Americans think that the healthcare affordability problem will get worse: 

A majority (56%) of adults said they expect their family’s healthcare costs to become less affordable in the next year.

About 1 in 5 say that their healthcare costs have already increased more quickly than other necessities such as monthly utilities (23%) and food and groceries (21%).

Healthcare costs fuel nonpartisan anxiety

The KFF poll showed that healthcare costs are the top economic worry for Democrats, Independents, Republicans, and supporters of President Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

More than 4 in 10 voters say that healthcare costs will have a “major impact” both on their decision to vote in the midterm elections (44%) and on which party’s candidates they will support (43%). 

This includes:

• Two thirds of Democrats.
• More than 4 in 10 independents.
• About a fifth of Republicans.

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“The American public doesn’t understand that consolidated healthcare systems are charging prices that earn them extraordinary profits, which raises the costs of care for patients and employers alike,’’ said Vivian Ho, an expert in health economics and policy at Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine.

ACA enhanced premium tax credits play a key role

Brian Blase, president of the Paragon Health Institute and an influential conservative in the field, told The Washington Post that healthcare costs “are crushing families and leading to massive federal deficits.” 

He called for eradicating “government subsidies and regulations that reward inefficient incumbent providers and hospital systems and protect them from competition.”

This is an unsettling time for Americans worried about healthcare costs:

• The public’s anxiety around healthcare costs comes at a time when the Senate and President Doland Trump seem unlikely to revive the ACA enhanced premium tax credits, which expired on Jan. 1.
• Most (67%) of the public say Congress did the “wrong thing” by not extending the credits, including large majorities of Democrats (89%) and independents (72%). 
• The majority of Republicans (63%) including "MAGA" supporters (64%) say Congress did the “right thing” by not extending the ACA enhanced premium tax credits. 

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