Rutgers-Eagleton Poll Results Provide NJ Perspective
While the speakers focused on health policy and affordability at the national level, the Quality Institute simultaneously published results of a poll of New Jerseyans on these topics:
- 75% are very or somewhat worried about the cost of health care services
- 75% are very or somewhat worried about unexpected medical bills
- 65% are very or somewhat worried about their monthly health insurance premium
- 61% are very or somewhat worried about prescription drug costs
The poll, conducted in partnership with the Rutgers-Eagleton Poll, also revealed perspectives on reproductive health in New Jersey:
- 77% say abortion should be legal in all or most cases
- 78% are very or somewhat concerned that abortion bans will lead to unnecessary health problems
Amid a rancorous election season already showing partisan divides in perceptions of the economy, foreign policy, and the candidates themselves, one potential area of common ground is that Americans are frustrated with the unaffordability of health care. However, sweeping legislation is likely not on the horizon regardless of who’s elected, according to speakers at the spring conference of the New Jersey Health Care Quality Institute, held in Princeton, NJ, on May 14, 2024.
Linda Schwimmer, JD, president and CEO of the Quality Institute, kicked off the event by reminding the audience that New Jersey voters will face many choices at the ballot box over the next 18 months, with federal, statewide, and gubernatorial elections coming up, and these elections will have a profound impact on health care policies. To discuss these issues from a national vantage point, she introduced the event’s keynote speakers, Christopher Whaley, PhD, and Anand Parekh, MD, MPH.
Whaley, who is an associate professor in the Department of Health Services, Policy, and Practice at Brown University School of Public Health, took the stage to explain how health care affordability is increasingly driving political pressure. In the US, health care prices are high, variable across the nation, maddeningly opaque, and not linked to quality, which “drives a lot of the current frustration with the US health care system,” he said. Deductibles and premiums have far outpaced both wages and inflation, leaving households struggling to pay for care.
The resulting importance of the health care affordability conundrum elevates it to where 39% of voters say they would cross party lines to vote for a candidate who makes it their top priority.1 In fact, at an employer conference Whaley attended the day prior, 2 senators with diametrically opposite political stances—Mike Braun (R, Indiana) and Bernie Sanders (I, Vermont)—both received an award for their work on price transparency illustrating that “these health care affordability issues are creating very strange bedfellows, but actually, that’s the area where there’s a lot of encouragement and a lot of stuff getting done.”
Another driver of frustration is that the cost of care depends on the market and setting where the care is delivered, Whaley said. For instance, research he coauthored in the April issue of The American Journal of Managed Care® found that prices are higher for hospital-based outpatient surgery than at freestanding surgery centers—without any link to better quality.2 And while it’s not yet top of mind for voters, the accelerating trend of mergers, vertical integration, and private equity acquisitions will contribute to even more growth in costs over the coming years, so policy makers will need to better regulate competition, Whaley noted. Prospects for that may be brighter at the state level, considering the seeming impossibility of getting major legislation through Congress, even though the frustration with unaffordability is bipartisan and touches every state.
