As economic conditions continue to worsen, the public is increasingly worried about the affordability and availability of care, with many postponing or skipping treatments due to cost in the past year, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s first healthcare tracking poll of 2009.
Slightly more than half (53 percent) of Americans say their household cut back on health care due to cost concerns in the past 12 months. The most common actions reported are relying on home remedies and over-the-counter drugs rather than visiting a doctor (35 percent) or skipping dental care (34 percent). Roughly one in four report putting off health care they needed (27 percent), one in five say they have not filled a prescription (21 percent), and one in six (15 percent) say they cut pills in half or skipped doses to make their prescription last longer.
The 27 percent of the public that reported they had put off or postponed getting needed health care were asked about the specific types of care they had forgone. The most common responses were delaying going to the doctor for a temporary illness (19 percent) or for preventive care (19 percent). But nearly as many--16 percent--report putting off care for a more serious problem, either postponing a doctor’s visit related to a chronic illness such as diabetes or delaying major or minor surgery.
Read the summary of key findings.
