Poll studies American views on health care

March 15 01:00 2016 by ushadmin

Twenty five percent of U.S. adults do not have a regular doctor and 26 percent have serious financial problems related to healthcare, according to a public health poll released last month.

A new 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 41 percent as “good,” one in four Americans rates their insurance as just fair (20 percent) or poor (5 percent).

Barriers to Accessing Health Care

Nearly three in four (74 percent) 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 percent) adults in the U.S. does not.

When it comes to receiving needed health care, more than one in seven (15 percent) adults in the U.S. 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 percent) 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, the poll’s release said.
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, according to the study…