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The article focuses on a 2019 national survey conducted in the U.S. which found that seriously ill Medicare beneficiaries experienced financial hardships as a consequence of the illness. Topics covered include evidence of Medicare's popularity among its beneficiaries, and an assessment of medical care costs on seriously ill beneficiaries and their family and friends.

The article focuses on the U.S. health care costs, discussing the rising prices of the U.S. prescription-drugs. It presents the U.S. Public's view's on the issue who states that U.S. President Donald Trump and U.S. Congress top priority is to reduce the prescription-drug prices in 2019. The respondents also opened up on the domestic issues including health care, and talked about the U.S. spending of gross domestic product on health care costs.

For decades, public satisfaction with the health care system has been lower in the United States than in other high-income countries. To better understand the distinctive nature of US health system satisfaction, we compared the determinants of satisfaction with the health system in the United States to those in seventeen other high-income countries by applying regression decomposition methods to survey data collected in the period 2011-13. We found that concerns related to "accessing most-preferred care" (the extent to which people feel that they can access their top preferences at a time of need) were more important to satisfaction in the United States than in other high-income countries, while the reverse was true for satisfaction with recent interactions with the health system. Differences among US socioeconomic groups in survey responses regarding access to most-preferred care suggest that wide variation in insurance coverage and generosity may play a role in these differences. While reductions in the uninsured population and the movement toward minimum health plan standards could help address some concerns about access to preferred care, our results raise the possibility of public backlash as market forces push plans toward more restricted access and higher cost sharing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under the Affordable Care Act, thirty states and the District of Columbia have expanded eligibility for Medicaid, with several states using Medicaid funds to purchase private insurance (the "private option"). Despite vigorous debate over the use of private insurance versus traditional Medicaid to provide coverage to low-income adults, there is little evidence on the relative merits of the two approaches. We compared the first-year impacts of traditional Medicaid expansion in Kentucky, the private option in Arkansas, and nonexpansion in Texas by conducting a telephone survey of two distinct waves of low-income adults (5,665 altogether) in those three states in November-December 2013 and twelve months later. Using a difference-in-differences analysis, we found that the uninsurance rate declined by 14 percentage points in the two expansion states, compared to the nonexpansion state. In the expansion states, again compared to the nonexpansion state, skipping medications because of cost and trouble paying medical bills declined significantly, and the share of individuals with chronic conditions who obtained regular care increased. Other than coverage type and trouble paying medical bills (which decreased more in Kentucky than in Arkansas), there were no significant differences between Kentucky's traditional Medicaid expansion and Arkansas's private option, which suggests that both approaches improved access among low-income adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background A number of expert reports have pointed to serious problems with health care in many Latin American countries and argued the need to reform and improve health-care systems. In addition, the Ministers of Health of the Americas have stated that health systems should be accountable to citizens. Objective This paper examines, in each of 17 Latin American countries, public dissatisfaction with the health care to which people have access, the proportion of people reporting problems with access to and the cost of health care and the factors that are most important in driving public dissatisfaction. Methods Data are drawn from a 2007 Latinobarómetro survey of 19 212 adults interviewed face-to-face in 17 Latin American countries. Results The proportion of people expressing dissatisfaction with their health care varies a great deal by country, as do the proportions reporting problems with access to and the cost of health care. Problems with access to care seem to matter most in trying to explain public dissatisfaction with their health care. More traditional measures of health outcomes and resources seem to matter less as drivers of dissatisfaction. Conclusions For governments trying to improve their citizens' satisfaction with the health care they receive, the highest priority would be improving people's basic access to health-care services. Also, it appears that democratic governments are seen as being more responsive to the public's needs in health care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For more than two decades, polls have shown that Americans are dissatisfied with their current health care system. However, the public's views on how to change the current system are more conflicted than often suggested by individual poll results. At the same time, Americans are both dissatisfied with the current health care system and relatively satisfied with their own health care arrangements. As a result of the conflict between these views and the public's distrust of government, there often is a wide gap between the public's support for a set of principles concerning what needs to be done about the overall problems facing the nation's health care system and their support for specific policies designed to achieve those goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opinion surveys conducted in 2006 show that health care is an important but second-tier issue in terms of priorities for government action. Americans' top health care concerns are mostly related to economic insecurity: rising costs and the problems of the uninsured. The biggest perceived health threats are cancer, HIV/AIDS, and avian flu. Although most Americans do not think that the health system is in crisis, the public remains dissatisfied with both the country's health care and public health systems. These attitudes are likely to create a climate that is supportive of increased health spending and substantial policy changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data drawn from ten recent public opinion polls show that the issue of the uninsured is likely to become more visible on the U.S. agenda, although not as prominent as it was in the early 1990s. Although there is no public consensus on any single approach, a hybrid plan-which leaves workplace insurance in place and includes elements of several proposals now being discussed to cover more of the uninsured-offers the possibility of public support. The critical issue is whether or not there will be public support in the future for raising revenues to pay for major expansions in coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the public opinion regarding the national debate in the U.S. Congress over the health care reform in the U.S. It states that the public sent at least three distinct messages to the Congress including the approach of middle class Americans to the cost and security of their health care insurance coverage, achievement of the Congress for comprehensive reform, and specific proposals to overhaul the health care system. It says that the increasing worries of middle class Americans has driven the latest health care reform debate. It mentions that the Americans were divided over the primary choices for reform such as to contain increasing health care costs and ways to achieve universal coverage.

Examines the problems of cost, access and distribution of medical care in the U.S. Role of the government in addressing these problems; Principal unwanted side effect of making widespread health insurance available; Factor influencing the development of a highly complex health-care system in the country.

In June 2018 Arkansas became the first US state to implement work requirements in Medicaid, requiring adults ages 30-49 to work twenty hours a week, participate in "community engagement" activities, or qualify for an exemption to maintain coverage. By April 2019, when a federal judge put the policy on hold, 18,000 adults had already lost coverage. We analyze the policy's effects before and after these events, using a telephone survey performed in late 2019 of 2,706 low-income adults in Arkansas and three control states compared with data from 2016 and 2018. We have four main findings. First, most of the Medicaid coverage losses in 2018 were reversed in 2019 after the court order. Second, work requirements did not increase employment over eighteen months of follow-up. Third, people in Arkansas ages 30-49 who had lost Medicaid in the prior year experienced adverse consequences: 50 percent reported serious problems paying off medical debt, 56 percent delayed care because of cost, and 64 percent delayed taking medications because of cost. These rates were significantly higher than among Arkansans who remained in Medicaid all year. Finally, awareness of the work requirements remained poor, with more than 70 percent of Arkansans unsure whether the policy was in effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alternative approaches in Medicaid are proliferating under the Trump administration. Using a novel telephone survey, we assessed views on health savings accounts, work requirements, and Medicaid expansion. Our sample consisted of 2,739 low-income nonelderly adults in three Midwestern states: Ohio, which expanded eligibility for traditional Medicaid; Indiana, which expanded Medicaid using health savings accounts called POWER accounts; and Kansas, which has not expanded Medicaid. We found that coverage rates in 2017 were significantly higher in the two expansion states than in Kansas. However, cost-related barriers were more common in Indiana than in Ohio. Among Medicaid beneficiaries eligible for Indiana's waiver program, 39 percent had not heard of POWER accounts, and only 36 percent were making required payments, which means that nearly two-thirds were potentially subject to loss of benefits or coverage. In Kansas, 77 percent of respondents supported expanding Medicaid. With regard to work requirements, 49 percent of potential Medicaid enrollees in Kansas were already employed, 34 percent were disabled, and only 11 percent were not working but would be more likely to look for a job if required by Medicaid. These findings suggest that current Medicaid innovations may lead to unintended consequences for coverage and access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The authors discuss public opinion on health care reform in the U.S. He mentions the factors affecting public support for health care change including public perception on problems affecting the country and their own life assessment. It is revealed that most of the insured population have satisfaction over their own health insurance coverage and health care costs but they still have worries about losing their coverage.

The article looks at the role health care issues will play in determining the outcome of the U.S. House and Senate elections in November 2006. The authors examined data from 11 national opinion surveys, one of which was designed and analyzed by the Kaiser Family Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health. According to the survey data, while health issues such as Medicare, health care costs, and health insurance are seen as important factors, these issues are not the main issues for voters in the midterm elections. National security issues, including the war on Iraq and terrorism, were ranked higher than healthcare issues.

The events of 11 September 2001 continue to drive the U.S. national agenda, pushing aside issues that were formerly front and center. In this set of Web exclusives, a paper by public opinion expert Robert Blendon and colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health demonstrate that turmoil overseas, fears of terrorism at home, and pocketbook issues have thrust health care aside. Blendon's most recent survey, conducted in June 2002, shows that health care has dropped out of the top-five ranking when Americans are asked to name the two most important issues for the government to address. Americans are showing greater dissatisfaction with the availability and affordability of health care, and it has grown since last year, when people were more frightened by anthrax and terrorist attacks. Blendon and colleagues conclude that while health care may be a lower priority than it was a year ago and may play less of a role in the 2002 congressional elections than it did in 2000, rising public dissatisfaction with the health care system means that it could reemerge as an issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]