THE FUTURE OF HEALTH CARE: Better Quality, Less Affordable?
A new Harris Poll finds that a spare majority of Americans (54%- 43%) "expect that the quality of medical care will improve" across the next two decades. At the same time, however, the survey of 1,010 adults conducted between Nov. 11 and Nov. 15 found that 64% of respondents "believe that people will be less able to afford" medical care by the year 2020. Humphrey Taylor, chair of Louis Harris & Associates, said that "[i]t is surely the fear that health care will become less affordable, rather than a lack of medical progress, which leads so many people to believe that the quality of care overall will decline in the next 20 years." Whites (55%) and Hispanics (53%) were more likely to believe that medical care quality would improve than were African Americans (45%). By the same token, men (59%) were more likely to be optimistic about future quality of care than women (49%). The poll's margin of error, with 95% certainty, is +/- 3 percentage points (Harris release, 1/8).
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