Massachusetts Consumers: Health Care Prices of No Great Concern

Here is a summary of a recent poll in Massachusetts via the Boston Globe:

The latest edition of an annual health care poll conducted by Mass Insight suggests most people don’t find the price they pay for health coverage to be a serious problem. The poll, which will be officially released next week, also shows a large majority of people don’t want to give up anything when it comes to health coverage or the freedom to choose whom they see for medical help.

“While there’s increasing concern about costs, the majority of people still don’t see health premiums and prescription drug costs as enough of a burden to cause them to support reforms that might change their habits,’’ said William Guenther, president of Mass Insight, a public policy research and consulting firm in Boston.

About one in every three people surveyed in April described health care premiums as a serious problem and many of them — 21 percent of the 500 people questioned by phone — described the financial burden as “very big.’’

But that leaves two out of every three people surveyed who considered health care costs to be less pressing. One in every four said health insurance premiums were “not a burden at all.’’

A majority of people polled said they disapproved of limiting coverage for high-cost and experimental treatments as well as policies that limit coverage for prescription drugs. A whopping 80 percent were against limiting consumer choice of doctors and hospitals.

Most survey respondents had opposed the same restrictions in the past two years, but the percentages of people against each of those ideas increased in April.

Fifty-six percent said they did not believe state government had a strategy to keep the health care system financially stable in the latest poll. But about the same percentage of respondents have answered that question the same way for the past seven years.

Of the 500 people interviewed, I wonder how many were paying for their own coverage through and individual product? I would guess by the results not very many. And keep in mind this poll took place in Massachusetts which has some of the highest health care costs in the country.