Tuesday, October 17, 2006
Academics worry about the quality of care. The national media is absorbed with the government's new Medicare prescription drug benefit. But the public is most interested in more fundamental issues regarding their healthcare: skyrocketing costs and how to cover people who lack insurance.
Those are the findings of a poll released today by Robert Blendon, a Harvard School of Public Health professor of health policy who specializes in public attitudes about healthcare.
"Americans want their government to do something about healthcare costs and the problem of the uninsured," Blendon said. "And when Americans talk about healthcare costs, they're talking about the hit on the family budget, not about a percentage of the gross domestic product."
The findings are being published by the medical journal Health Affairs. In a survey sponsored by Harvard and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, 43 percent of Americans surveyed named high costs as one of the two most important healthcare issues for government to address, while 34 percent flagged the lack of insurance and access. Issues related to Medicare and the drug benefit finished a distant third, named by only 15 percent as one of the two most important issues, while low-quality care was even further behind at 11 percent.
http://www.boston.com/business/ticker/2006/10/poll_costs_numb.html
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