Poll: Americans Still Worried About Paying For Their Health Care

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A new Gallup poll finds that the passage of the health care bill has not actually improved Americans’ outlook on their health care costs, with people still worried about whether they would be able to pay their medical bills.

The poll found that 61% of Americans are very or moderately worried about being able to pay medical costs for normal healthcare, up from 58% a year ago. Also, 48% are very or moderately worried about not being able to pay medical costs in case of a serious illness or accident, up from 48% a year ago. And in both cases, these figures are the highest they’ve been in Gallup’s annual figure for the entire past decade.

The poll of American adults has a margin of error of ±4%.

From the pollster’s analysis:

Most of the actual impact of the comprehensive healthcare legislation will not be felt for months or years, with few specific short-term changes in the nation’s healthcare system. Gallup research conducted after the bill’s passage showed that the majority of Americans were not expecting the law to improve their personal healthcare cost situations, even in the long term. Still, the high visibility of the new law — and the fact that a substantial minority of Americans favored its passage — might have been expected to tilt Americans’ worries or concerns about healthcare-related financial matters in at least a marginally more positive direction. But Gallup finds no such shift to date.

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