Tuesday, October 20, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans worried about losing their current health-care coverage keeps rising, even as President Barack Obama and a Democrat-led Congress strive to extend society’s safety net to cover the uninsured, a new poll has found.
The growing levels of insurance insecurity are reflected in the latest monthly snapshot from the nonpartisan Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Americans have conflicting views on whether a health-care overhaul will help matters, make them worse or leave things about the same.
The foundation’s September poll found that about one-third of Americans said they were worried about losing current coverage, a slight increase from 29 percent who reported such concerns the previous month.
Indeed, the share of Americans who say they’re worried about losing coverage in the next 12 months has gone up by 11 percentage points since the health-care debate began in the spring.
“Despite rising faith in the strength of our economy, people still feel financially pinched and increasingly concerned that they could lose their health-care coverage and access to care,” said foundation president Risa Lavizzo- Mourey. The nonprofit organization sponsors research and is broadly supportive of overhauling the health-care system.
The worries about losing health insurance were greatest among young adults (40 percent), followed by middle-aged people (38 percent). But 29 percent of seniors also said they were worried, even though they have taxpayer- subsidized coverage through Medicare.
The foundation’s health-care confidence index — a broad measure designed to gauge consumer attitudes about insurance coverage, affordability and cost— inched upward from August.