Americans Are Overwhelmingly Satisfied with their Health Coverage, Finds New PRI National Survey

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Sep 14, 2022, 08:53 ET

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Sept. 14, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and "Medicare for All" proponents contend that people are not satisfied with their current health care coverage.

But the results of a new national survey commissioned by the nonpartisan Pacific Research Institute, a California-based free-market think tank, find that 86 percent of Americans are satisfied with their current health insurance plans, compared to 8 percent who said they were dissatisfied.

Click here to read the full survey results

When asked how they would rate their current health insurance coverage, 70 percent of those surveyed rated it as good, compared to 20 percent who rated it as adequate and 6 percent who rated it as poor.

71 percent of those employed – and who are most likely to have employer-sponsored coverage – rated their coverage as good. In comparison, just 47 percent of those unemployed – a plurality of whom (41%) used Medicaid – rated their health coverage as good.

When asked why they were dissatisfied with their current health coverage, respondents cited high costs and bureaucratic restrictions from insurers and government:

46 percent said premiums were too high
45 percent said deductibles were too high
39 percent said co-pays were too high
28 percent said limited or restricted access to specialists
26 percent said too many restrictions for CT scans, MRIs, and other special tests

These results confirm, as PRI's Sally Pipes has noted, the more Americans learn what single-payer health care would mean for them – higher costs, increased taxes, longer wait times, less access to specialists, reduced availability of care – the more they reject it.

The results also reinforce the need to reform the third-party health care payment system, as documented in PRI's Coverage Denied series, which saddles patients with higher out-of-pocket costs, greater exposure to financial risk, and reduced access to care. Reforms are needed to ensure the priorities of patients are put first, ahead of government and insurers as the largest payers for care.

When asked what type of health coverage they currently had, 46 percent of those employed had employer-sponsored coverage and 11 percent bought private insurance on the individual market. Among those unemployed, 41 percent used Medicaid, 12 percent Medicare, 13 percent private insurance, and 16 percent did not have insurance. 74 percent of retirees said they had Medicare coverage.

Echelon Insights conducted the national survey for PRI from August 19-22, 2022, in English, among a sample of 1,054 voters nationwide determined to be part of the likely electorate for the 2022 election using non-probability sampling. The sample was weighted to population benchmarks for registered voters and 2022 likely voters on gender, age, race/ethnicity, education, region, party, and 2020 president vote adjusted for 2022 turnout probability. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.6 percentage points.

The Pacific Research Institute (www.pacificresearch.org) champions freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility through free-market policy ideas. Follow PRI on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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SOURCE Pacific Research Institute