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Monday, June 26th, 2017

Cost of Healthcare Is Americans’ Top Financial Concern

Author:     Andrew Dugan
Source:     The Gallup Organization
Publication Date:     JUNE 23, 2017
 Link: Cost of Healthcare Is Americans’ Top Financial Concern
Stephan:   If you travel internationally you have undoubtedly noticed that in no other developed nation do people lie awake at night worrying whether someone in their family who has a significant medical condition will be able to get the care they need, or to afford the drugs their physicians want them to take. Why is that? Because in the United States we don't have a system that puts wellbeing first. Instead we have an illness profit system. When you strip away the political bloviation it becomes clear that this whole debate is about how to lower taxes on the rich and still assure vast profits for the corporations that make up the healthcare sector. Americans value profit above health, or even life itself.

Credit: The Gallup Organization

These results come from a June 7-11 Gallup poll.

Americans’ concerns about the cost of healthcare fell substantially in 2008 amid the financial recession. These concerns were replaced with more fundamental financial problems such as a lack of money, low wages and unemployment. Higher gas prices also weighed heavily on American families’ finances at that time.

As the political debate over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) heated up in late 2009 and 2010, healthcare costs once again became one of the most commonly cited top financial problems, reaching as high as 15% in April 2010, shortly after the bill was signed into law (though the figure fell to 10% later that year).

Over the next few years, concern about healthcare typically stayed around the 12% to 14% range, though in 2013, concerns dropped down to 10% as more provisions of the legislation were implemented. However, concerns again inched up in 2014 and continued moving up in subsequent years, culminating with this year’s 17%, the highest level since October 2007.

Rising concern about healthcare […]

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