THE VALUED VOICE

A new national poll’s results show that the COVID-19 pandemic hasn’t significantly changed people’s preferences on whether the private sector or the government should drive changes on health care innovation, quality improvement or providing coverage.
 
The study,conducted by the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, compared polls of adults from February 2020 – just after the country’s first diagnosed case of COVID-19 – and May 2020. The poll found that people are more likely to trust private entities rather than the government on driving innovation in health care (70% to 28%), improving quality (62% to 36%) and providing insurance coverage (53% to 44%).
 
Other interesting results from the two polls:
 

• People are more concerned about other’s access to high-quality health care (62%) than their own access (46%). This gap has increased by 1% from February to May.
• Since the COVID-19 outbreak, those polled are less concerned about losing their health care (28% in February vs. 19% in May), the amount they spend on health care (from 44% to 35%) and having access to high-quality care when they need it (58% to 46%).
• About two-thirds of Americans (64%) want to pay less for prescription drugs, even if it means fewer drugs coming to market in the future.

You can read the questions asked and a deeper breakdown of poll responses here.