1 in 5 Americans did not seek needed medical treatment during the pandemic due to cost
More than 46 million say they still could not afford medical care today
2021-03-31
(Press-News.org) WASHINGTON, DC - March 31, 2021 -- Nearly 20% of Americans, or more than 46 million adults, say they did not seek treatment for a health problem in the last year due to cost, and an equal number say that if they needed some form of healthcare today they would not be able to afford it, according to a new West Health-Gallup survey. The findings come as Americans struggle through a year-plus long pandemic that has claimed over 550,000 lives and put millions of people out of work.
Americans who found themselves unemployed were about twice as likely (38%) to avoid medical care due to cost in the last year. And, while Black, Hispanic and White Americans skipped treatments in roughly equal numbers last year, more people of color are worried about what the future may hold. Nearly one-third (29%) of Black adults - nearly double the number of White adults - and more than one-fifth of Hispanic adults (21%), say if they needed healthcare today, they could not afford it.
"The COVID-19 pandemic has upended life over the last year, and as we begin to emerge from the worst public health crisis in 100 years, we are left with another crisis that has never gone away - the high cost of healthcare," said Tim Lash, chief strategy officer for West Health, a family of nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations dedicated to lowering healthcare costs to enable successful aging. "Millions of Americans simply can't afford healthcare and policymakers simply can't continue to ignore this painful truth."
In the last year, tens of millions of Americans say they were forced to cut back on basic necessities like food (12%) and utilities (9%) to pay for healthcare, while 35% say they reduced spending on recreational activities and 26% reduced spending on clothing. Nearly 30% found paying for general healthcare a significant financial burden behind housing (51%), taxes (48%) and food (41%). Costs for prescription drugs are a significant financial burden for more than 1 in 5 adults (22%). The survey also found that more than half (52%) of all Americans say they are either "worried" or "very worried" that a health event will wipe out their savings.
This may explain why the American public overwhelmingly favors reforms including setting caps in Medicare on out-of-pocket costs for prescription drugs (88%) and general healthcare services (85%). Majorities of Americans also support lowering the age of Medicare eligibility to 60 (65%), making Medicare available to everyone (60%) and strengthening the Affordable Care Act (59%), though Democrats are much more likely to support these latter three measures than are Republicans. Slight majorities of Independents support the measures.
"Our surveys consistently show that the high cost of healthcare is a significant worry for tens of millions of Americans and that these concerns have persisted throughout the course of the COVID era," said Dan Witters, Gallup senior researcher. "As the pandemic recedes and normalcy slowly returns to everyday life, anxiety over affording quality care appears likely to again become a primary issue for elected officials to address."
INFORMATION:
This latest West Health-Gallup survey was conducted by the web between Feb. 15 and Feb. 21, 2021 with 3,753 adults, ages 18+, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia via the Gallup Panel, a scientifically populated, non-opt-in panel of about 120,000 adults nationwide. To read the full survey findings and methodology, please visit here.
About Gallup
Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 80 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers, students and citizens than any other organization in the world.
About West Health
Solely funded by philanthropists Gary and Mary West, West Health is a family of nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations including the Gary and Mary West Foundation and Gary and Mary West Health Institute in San Diego, and the Gary and Mary West Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C. West Health is dedicated to lowering healthcare costs to enable seniors to successfully age in place with access to high-quality, affordable health and support services that preserve and protect their dignity, quality of life and independence. Learn more at westhealth.org and follow @westhealth.
[Attachments] See images for this press release:
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2021-03-31
The era of big data has inundated nearly all scientific fields with torrents of newly available data with the power to stimulate new research and enable inquiry at scales not previously possible. This is particularly true for ecology, where rapid growth in remote sensing, monitoring, and community science initiatives has contributed to a massive surge in the quantity and kinds of environmental data that are available to researchers.
Writing in BioScience, a team led by US Department of Agriculture ecologist Sarah McCord states that the volume of the data is only part of the story. Just as important, they say, is the quality of the data. According to the newly published article, "Big data has magnified both the burden and the complexity of ensuring ...
2021-03-31
GENEVA, LAUSANNE, 31 March 2021: Cocaine is a highly addictive substance that, in the long term, can have adverse effects on health and wellbeing. There are around 18 million cocaine users globally, according to a UN report. Understanding how cocaine modifies brain networks could reveal potential targets for therapies to treat addiction and other neuropsychological disorders.
A new study published today in the journal Frontiers in Synaptic Neuroscience by a team of researchers from the University of Lausanne and the Wyss Center for Bio and Neuroengineering reveals that during cocaine withdrawal, neurons in a brain area associated with depression connect ...
2021-03-31
CLEVELAND, Ohio (March 31, 2021)--Menopause typically signals the end of a woman's ability to become pregnant. However, in a small new study, a novel approach of administering platelet-rich plasma and gonadotropins near the ovarian follicles is showing promise in restoring ovarian function. Study results are published online today in Menopause, the journal of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS).
As more women look to build their careers before pursuing motherhood, the average age of conceiving a child continues to be pushed back. For some of these women, however, their hope of becoming pregnant is cut short by the onset of early menopause, which is described as the cessation of ovarian function ...
2021-03-31
A research team of the National Institutes of Natural Sciences, National Institute for Fusion Science and Akita Prefectural University have successfully demonstrated a broadband mid-infrared (MIR) source with a simple configuration. This light source generates highly-stable broadband MIR beam at 2.5-3.7 μm wavelength range maintaining the brightness owing to its high-beam quality. Such a broadband MIR source facilitates a simplified environmental monitoring system by constructing a MIR fiber-optic sensor, which has the potential for industrial and medical applications.
In the MIR wavelength region, there are many strong absorption lines of molecules ...
2021-03-31
A*STAR's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) has teamed up with Singapore Institute of Advanced Medicine Holdings Pte Ltd (SIAMH) to establish the first of its kind in-vitro patient-derived 3D organoid models of Nasopharyngeal Cancer (NPC).
The study was published in Frontiers in Oncology on 23 February 2021. It is the first direct experimental evidence to predict optimal Radiation Treatment (RT) boost dose required to cause sufficient damage to recurrent hypoxic (low oxygen level) NPC tumour cells, which can be further used to develop dose-painting algorithms in clinical practice.
Two patient-derived xenograft (PDX) ...
2021-03-31
Researchers from Loyola Marymount University, San Diego State University, Indian Institute of Management, and Iowa State University published a new paper in the Journal of Marketing that examines how effective marketplace participation by subsistence consumers requires knowledge and skills that relate to what, how, and why to participate.
The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Marketing, is titled "Marketplace Literacy as a Pathway to a Better World: Evidence from Field Experiments in Low-Access Subsistence Marketplaces" and is authored by Madhu Viswanathan, Nita Umashankar, Arun Sreekumar, and Ashley Goreczny.
Success for marketers looking to emerging markets for growth is inextricably ...
2021-03-31
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Bangladesh's floating gardens, built to grow food during flood seasons, could offer a sustainable solution for parts of the world prone to flooding because of climate change, a new study has found.
The study, published recently in the Journal of Agriculture, Food and Environment, suggests that floating gardens might not only help reduce food insecurity, but could also provide income for rural households in flood-prone parts of Bangladesh.
"We are focused here on adaptive change for people who are victims of climate change, but who did not cause climate ...
2021-03-31
PULLMAN, Wash. -- Nature's strongest material now has some stiff competition. For the first time, researchers have hard evidence that human-made hexagonal diamonds are stiffer than the common cubic diamonds found in nature and often used in jewelry.
Named for their six-sided crystal structure, hexagonal diamonds have been found at some meteorite impact sites, and others have been made briefly in labs, but these were either too small or had too short of an existence to be measured.
Now scientists at Washington State University's Institute for Shock Physics created hexagonal diamonds large enough to measure ...
2021-03-31
Chestnut Hill, Mass. (3/31/21) -- Spinach, a cost-efficient and environmentally friendly scaffold, provided an edible platform upon which a team of researchers led by a Boston College engineer has grown meat cells, an advance that may accelerate the development of cultured meat, according to a new report in the advance online edition of the journal Food BioScience.
Stripped of all but its veiny skeleton, the circulatory network of a spinach leaf successfully served as an edible substrate upon which the researchers grew bovine animal protein, said Boston College Professor of Engineering Glenn Gaudette, the lead author of the new study. The results may help increase the production of cellular agriculture ...
2021-03-31
Research published today in the peer-reviewed Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology describes a newly discovered species of dinosaur - named the 'one who causes fear', or Llukalkan aliocranianus.
Around 80 million years ago as tyrannosaurs ruled the Northern Hemisphere, this lookalike was one of 10 currently known species of abelisaurids flourishing in the southern continents.
A fearsome killer, Llukalkan was "likely among the top predators" throughout Patagonia, now in Argentina, during the Late Cretaceous due to its formidable size (up to five meters long), extremely powerful ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] 1 in 5 Americans did not seek needed medical treatment during the pandemic due to cost
More than 46 million say they still could not afford medical care today
