The Wall Street Journal

March 31, 2015

By Drew Altman

 

National spending on health care and insurance premiums has risen at historically low rates in recent years. But… even when spending and premiums experienced record-low growth in 2013, only 3% of Americans said health costs had been rising slower than usual, and 52% said they had been growing faster than usual. The American people are not out to lunch; their view of the problem of health costs is very different from that of experts.

 

In more than 20 years of regular polling on health-care issues by the Kaiser Family Foundation, I have found that Americans with coverage care about:

 

* Their premium costs, or the share of premiums they pay if they have employer coverage;

 

* Their deductibles and other forms of cost sharing, especially when deductibles have been rising steadily;

 

* Their drug costs (this is particularly an issue for the chronically ill, who use a lot of drugs);

 

* Whether their insurance covers the services they think they will need;

 

* Whether they can go to the doctor or hospital they want without having to pay more. People are more willing to accept a lower premium for less choice if they do not have a regular doctor or hospital;

 

* The hassle and red tape in health care and health insurance. Increasingly, people care about getting information to be informed about their health and make smarter insurance and health care decisions.

 

Two other things stand out:

 

Seniors care a lot about Medicare and sometimes vote on the issue.

 

And Americans overall don’t care as much as experts do about improving quality and eliminating unnecessary care. In general, people think that quality is good and they want more care not less.

 

(Drew Altman is president and chief executive officer of the Kaiser Family Foundation.)