
Boston—An NPR / Robert Wood Johnson Foundation / Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health poll finds that although a majority of Americans are satisfied with the health care they receive, many still experience significant problems with health care costs, insurance coverage, and accessing care when they need it.
While a strong majority of adults reflect positively on their health insurance coverage, with 33 percent rating theirs as “excellent” and 41percent as “good,” one in four Americans rates their insurance as just fair (20%) or poor (5%). More than a quarter of adults in the United States also say health care costs have caused serious financial problems for them or their family. Experiences among patients differ by state of residence, but as many as one in five adults in some states say they could not get the health care they needed at some point in the past two years.
The poll surveyed more than 1,000 adults nationwide and more than 1,000 adults in each of seven states—Florida, Kansas, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Texas, and Wisconsin—about their personal health care experiences and perceptions of the state in which they live. Those seven states were selected to represent a geographically diverse group of states that have and have not expanded Medicaid, as well as the only state in the nation that did not have to, as Wisconsin’s pre-ACA health insurance coverage levels already matched or exceeded those passed by health reform. Polling was conducted during the fall of 2015, after an additional estimated 17.6 million people acquired health insurance [1] in the United States.
While Three in Four Adults Have a Regular Health Care Provider, One in Seven Faces Major Barriers to Accessing Health Care
Nearly three in four (74%) Americans say they have a regular doctor or health care professional that provides most of their health care when they are sick or have a health concern; however, one in four (25%) adults in the United States does not. When it comes to receiving needed health care, more than one in seven (15%) adults in the United States say there has been at least one time in the past two years when they needed health care but could not get it. This may partially explain why one-third (33%) of adults nationwide say they have received health care in the emergency room (ER) of a hospital at least once in the past two years and why 23 percent of recent patients say they use the ER more now than they used to. Among those who have used the emergency room in the past two years, nearly half (47%) say they went to the ER because other facilities were not open or they could not get an appointment, they felt the ER was the only place that would treat them, or because other facilities were too far away.
[1] ObamaCare Facts, “ObamaCare Enrollment Numbers,” http://obamacarefacts.com/sign-ups/obamacare-enrollment-numbers/