Ali Meyer of the Washington Free Beacon highlights new information about Americans’ top financial concerns.
The top financial worry facing Americans today is the cost of health care, according to a poll from Gallup.
Seventeen percent of respondents said health care costs were their biggest financial concern facing their family today. Health care costs were a bigger concern than debt, low wages, college expenses, cost of owning a home, retirement savings, taxes, and unemployment, just to name a few.
“As the U.S. Senate begins considering legislation that could significantly change the nation’s health care system, the cost of health care leads the list of what Americans consider the most important financial problem facing their family,” Gallup states. …
… During the recession in 2008, concern over health care costs declined as Americans became more concerned with unemployment, lack of money, and low wages. However, in 2009 and 2010, when Congress began drafting the Affordable Care Act, concern about the cost of health care began to grow. In April of 2010, 15 percent of respondents said health care costs were their greatest financial worry.
Since that time, worry about the cost of health care declined through 2013 but started to rise again in 2014 and now have risen to this year’s 17 percent—the highest level seen since October 2007.
So the Affordable Care Act failed to assuage concerns about affordable health care.
