Health insurance trends show many covered Americans still aren’t seeking care

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Millions of people are skipping medical care despite the fact that they have a policy.

A survey commissioned by the American College of Emergency Physicians provided notable insight into health insurance trends. Unfortunately, it has revealed that many people who have a health plan are skipping medical care. They are showing increasing discontent with the expense and quality of their health plans.

Almost a third of survey participants felt their health insurance coverage had declined over the past year.

Only 15 percent of the participants in the health insurance trends study felt their coverage had improved in the last year. The participants in this study were composed of 2,016 registered voters. The research was conducted on September 8 through September 10. It worked to record a range of different opinions about the current health care system.

During this time, the health insurance trends report showed a number of common complaints.

health insurance trends, angry frustratedAmong those complaints included:

• 55 percent of the respondents said their coverage this year was more expensive than what it was in 2015.
• 25 percent said that they had experienced a medical condition that had worsened as a result of delaying emergency care within the last year. They chose to delay seeking medical treatment because they were afraid their health insurance wouldn’t cover it. They believed that their health care would be too expensive and decided not to seek it out.
• 24 percent of respondents said their family physicians were not within the insurer’s network. This had caused them to lose contact with those general practitioners as it was too costly to continue to see them.

These health insurance trends are clearly quite troubling. The fact that many people with coverage are allowing conditions to worsen out of fear of the related expense is particularly concerning. “As a physician, it greatly concerns me that people are waiting until their medical conditions deteriorate to seek emergency care, which can have lifelong consequences,” said American College of Emergency Physicians President Jay Kaplan. Kaplan places much of the blame on insurers selling policies that require policyholders to pay too much out of pocket.

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