Concerns over health care expenses begin to rise.
Many Americans have had to choose between paying rent and paying for health care. For some, health care is a major concern. In fact, new surveys found that some households found health care more difficult to pay for than rent, taxes, and groceries.
A recent poll found that more than 45 percent of consumers reported seeing health care costs on the rise in the past two years. One in five respondents said that there had been a time in the last two years that they had to choose between paying for health care and paying for things like rent or mortgages. In addition, 27 percent of respondents said that someone in the household had gone without needed health care because they felt they could not comfortably afford it. When asked what was difficult to pay, health care premiums came first, topping rent, groceries, and taxes.
The survey also asked how health care costs concerns affect how people think about their job situations. Forty-nine percent of people said that they considered health care to be a ‘major factor’ when assessing whether or not to take a certain job or start their own business. Furthermore, 20 percent of people surveyed said that this had been a situation they had been in within the past ten years and that they had chosen not to take a job because they needed to maintain health insurance coverage.
“The growth of health care costs remains a burden,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “There have been some slight improvements over the past two years, but a large number of Americans report that these concerns pervade nearly every aspect of their lives. The fact that health care is tied to employment has a negative impact for many people on job mobility and potential entrepreneurship.”
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