Americans’ Views of Health Care Costs, Access, and Quality

For more than two decades, polls have shown that Americans are dissatisfied with their current health care system. However, the public’s views on how to change the current system are more conflicted than often suggested by individual poll results. At the same time, Americans are both dissatisfied with the current health care system and relatively satisfied with their own health care arrangements. As a result of the conflict between these views and the public’s distrust of government, there often is a wide gap between the public’s support for a set of principles concerning what needs to be done about the overall problems facing the nation’s health care system and their support for specific policies designed to achieve those goals.

Author(s): Robert J. Blendon; Mollyann Brodie; John M. Benson; Drew E. Altman; Tami Buhr

Keywords: public opinion; health care costs; medically uninsured; quality of health care

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Volume 84, Issue 4 (pages 623–657)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-0009.2006.00463.x
Published in 2006