A new survey out of the Texas Medical Center Health Policy Institute found consumers see lowering costs as their number one healthcare priority, followed by health insurance affordability and universal coverage.
Conducted by national firm Luminas, the surveys were completed in June and July of this year. Approximately 5,000 individuals — 1,018 in Texas and 4,020 in the remaining 49 states — took part.
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Respondents were also split up based on their political affiliation. Democrats, Republicans and Independents all ranked cutting costs as the top healthcare priority. But the groups diverged when it came to their second priority. While Democrats chose universal coverage, while Republicans and Independents picked increasing the affordability of insurance premiums and deductibles.
A little bit of a deeper dive into the data shows how rising care costs are impacting consumers. Of the national (non-Texas) respondents, 59 percent said they somewhat agreed or strongly agreed with the phrase “I’m paying more out-of-pocket for my healthcare this year than two years ago.” And 49 percent of national respondents somewhat or strongly agreed with the sentence “I have to cut down on other expenses to pay for healthcare.”
Though financial factors matter to consumers, survey participants indicated they have a tough time talking about such issues with their provider. Forty-five percent of individuals said they want to talk to their doctor about whether they can afford recommended procedures and tests, but only 20 percent actually do so. The same goes for discussing medications. While 44 percent want to talk to their PCP about whether they can afford prescribed drugs, a mere 20 percent actually do.
Arthur “Tim” Garson, director of the Texas Medical Center Health Policy Institute, said the issue of cost is important not only to the country, but to the Institute as well. In a phone interview, he elaborated on why cost matters going forward.
“I really think that we cannot move forward with healthcare reform of any kind if we don’t address cost,” he said.
The cost issue isn’t a new one. Garson pointed to a 2012 JAMA paper by Donald Berwick and Andrew Hackbarth called “Eliminating Waste in US Health Care.” The article identifies six areas of waste in the American healthcare system: failures of care coordination, failures in execution of care processes, overtreatment, fraud and abuse, administrative complexity and pricing failures.
“[I]f the United States is to reconstruct a healthcare industry that is both affordable and relentlessly focused on meeting the needs of every single patient and family, waste reduction (that is, the removal of non-value-added practices in all their forms) is the best strategy by far,” the JAMA paper concludes.
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