Majority of Americans blame insurers and drug makers for rising health-care costs

Forty-four percent of U.S. adults are "extremely worried" or "very worried" about paying for rising health-care costs. And the top reasons cited for those rising costs are profits generated by drug companies and health insurance companies.

“Which of the following people/groups, if any, do you think are to blame for the increased cost of health insurance? Please select all that apply.”

Those are just two of the findings in a just-released study of 2,389 adults surveyed online between March 11 and 15 by Harris Interactive, one of the world's leading custom market research firms, and HealthDay, a leading producer and syndicator of health news.

Experts debate whether it's fair to blame the insurers and drug makers for the bulk of the escalating health-care costs. Some health economists say insurance and pharmaceutical company profits amount to only about 2 percent of total health-care spending. The rising charges are more likely due to the greater use of expensive health-care technologies and increased physician/hospital fees, some economists contend.

"Forty-four percent is a huge number of worried citizens and underscores the biggest concern about our health-care system, which is, 'How will America pay for it?’” said Humphrey Taylor, chairman of The Harris Poll, a service of Harris Interactive.

What is indisputable is that health-care costs are rising much faster than inflation or wages, and are gobbling up an ever-growing proportion of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Total spending on health care hit about $2.3 trillion in 2008, which translates to $7,681 per person and 16.2 percent of the GDP, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Read the full report for all the details of the poll. The Harris Interactive/HealthDay poll surveyed 2,389 adults online from March 11-15. HealthDay's news report is available here. Full data on the poll and its methodology are available at Harris Interactive.

Methodology

This survey was conducted online within the United States March 11 to 15, 2010 among 2,389 adults (aged 18 and over). Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents’ propensity to be online.

All sample surveys and polls, whether or not they use probability sampling, are subject to multiple sources of error which are most often not possible to quantify or estimate, including sampling error, coverage error, error associated with nonresponse, error associated with question wording and response options, and post-survey weighting and adjustments. Therefore, Harris Interactive avoids the words “margin of error” as they are misleading. All that can be calculated are different possible sampling errors with different probabilities for pure, unweighted, random samples with 100% response rates. These are only theoretical because no published polls come close to this ideal.

Respondents for this survey were selected from among those who have agreed to participate in Harris Interactive surveys. The data have been weighted to reflect the composition of the adult population. Because the sample is based on those who agreed to participate in the Harris Interactive panel, no estimates of theoretical sampling error can be calculated.