Poll: Costs of health coverage make voters uneasy

Even those who are employed don't feel good about their situation.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
WASHINGTON -- Frustration with the rising costs of health coverage surged sharply this year, helping to explain why many voters remain uneasy about the economy despite falling gas prices, low unemployment and a soaring stock market.
The annual Health Confidence Survey, released today by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute, found that more than half of those surveyed -- 52 percent -- were dissatisfied with health-insurance costs, up from 33 percent last year.
About 6 in 10 said costs of their health plan -- such as premiums, deductibles and co-payments -- had gone up in the past year. Of those who said their costs had risen, more than half said they were saving less as a result.
Retirement plans took a big hit, with 36 percent of those who reported higher costs over the past year saying they had reduced their contributions to 401(k) plans. About 28 percent of that same group said that because of health-related costs, they had trouble paying for such basic necessities as housing, heat and food.
"While people are employed, they don't feel particularly good about their situation, and that ends up influencing how they respond to questions about the economy," said Dallas Salisbury, president of the institute, a research group funded by employers, health-care companies and labor unions.
Earlier poll
Earlier this month, an ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 45 percent of Americans viewed the economy as getting worse, while only 17 percent saw improvement and 36 percent said conditions would remain stay the same.
"Individuals are not seeing their real income go up because their employers are spending more on health care," Salisbury said. "And individuals themselves are spending more on health care."
The EBRI poll found that workers regard their employer-sponsored coverage as an ever more valuable benefit, even as many new jobs come with no coverage and employers cut back or drop existing plans. Overall, the proportion of employees covered by a company plan dropped from 81 percent in 2001 to 77 percent in 2005.
Asked to choose between a $6,700 raise and employer-sponsored health insurance, 75 percent of those polled picked the health plan.
Of those, 13 percent said no raise would be big enough to persuade them to give up their coverage. The average cost of employer-provided coverage was about $6,700 per worker in 2004. It since has gone up to more than $7,100.
Passing cost on
After annual increases in health-insurance costs hit double-digit rates in 2001, employers passed an increasing share of the burden on to workers in the form of higher deductibles and co-payments. Such measures have worked to slow cost increases for employers, although they are still running at about twice the rate of overall inflation.
"There is a continuing shift," Salisbury said.
The telephone poll of 1,000 adults was the ninth such annual survey and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.