Americans are driving less, skipping meals and putting off big life moves, like buying homes or having children, to keep up with health care costs, according to two Gallup polls released Thursday.
Roughly one-third of Americans are cutting back on daily spending to cover medical costs, and about half of middle-income households said they have delayed a major life event because of the same expenses, the polls found, as premiums rise and the federal government cuts Medicaid spending.
Eleven percent of respondents said they had skipped a meal in the past year to meet health care costs, according to the first poll on Americans’ daily spending. Fifteen percent said they had borrowed money or prolonged a current drug prescription. The trend was most pronounced among Americans who don’t have health insurance, 62 percent of whom said they made at least one financial trade-off to pay for health care.
The findings paint a stark picture of how rising medical costs are impacting Americans’ daily lives as affordability emerges as a potential weak spot for Republicans in this fall’s midterm elections. President Donald Trump, who last month launched a program aimed at helping Americans purchase discounted medications, sought to promote his economic record Wednesday as the war in Iran causes gas prices to climb and destabilizes stock markets.
Researchers said they expected the affordability of health care to be a potent issue for voters in the midterm elections.
“People are making sacrifices, and they’re angry,” said Tim Lash, president of the health care nonprofit group West Health, which conducted the research in partnership with Gallup.
The second Gallup poll found that nearly 1 in 10 Americans reported postponing retirement in the past four years due to health care costs, and 6 percent said they postponed having or adopting a child.
“Seeing that health care is now impacting those decisions and the ability to kind of attain that American Dream, I think, is really striking,” said Ellyn Maese, research director of the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America.
Gallup polled nearly 20,000 American adults on cutting back on daily spending between June and August. Its poll on Americans postponing life events due to health care costs, which surveyed 5,660 U.S. adults, was done between October and December.
Other daily trade-offs respondents reported making to cover health care costs included cutting back on utilities and driving less to save gas money, according to Gallup. Just over half of Americans in households making less than $24,000 annually reported making a sacrifice to pay for medical care. Around a quarter of those making between $90,000 and $120,000 said the same.
People of all income levels reported putting off life events, such as changing jobs or pursuing additional education, surgery or vacations, due to health care costs. Around half of lower- and middle-income households reported postponing such events, and even a quarter of Americans making more than $240,000 said they had done so.
“Across all income levels, through middle class and even some wealthier individuals, unexpected trade-offs are happening,” Lash said.
Lash and Maese said the two studies are the first time their group has surveyed how health care costs are changing spending habits. The results align with findings from other polls released this year that found affordability and health care are among Americans’ top concerns. Health care costs topped a list of Americans’ economic anxieties, a KFF poll found, and most respondents to a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll said health care, vacations and new car purchases felt unaffordable.
Lash said Americans’ challenges keeping up with medical costs are driven not only by rising expenses, but also by a decline in health that snowballs when people can’t afford health care.
“When you look at these types of trade-offs, it increases people’s overall levels of anxieties or depression,” Lash said. “Sometimes even [at] a clinical level at scale.”
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