Rising healthcare costs, coupled with the current state of the economy, are prompting consumers to delay care, alter household spending and worry about their ability to pay for future healthcare costs, according to the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions.
Deloitte's fourth annual "U.S. and Global Survey of Health Care Consumers" assesses consumers’ behaviors, attitudes and unmet needs and quantifies year-to-year changes.
A new trend that emerged this year suggests that economic uncertainty has altered spending habits, with many consumers reporting an impact on out-of-pocket healthcare expenses.
[See also: U.S. healthcare costs continue its slow rise]
Key findings in the survey include:
- 75 percent of consumers say the recent economic slowdown has impacted their healthcare spending.
- 41 percent are more cautious about spending, 20 percent have cut back on spending, and 13 percent say they have reduced their spending considerably.
- 63 percent say their monthly healthcare spending limits their household's ability to purchase other essentials, such as housing, groceries, fuel and education.
- In an effort to save money, 36 percent of prescription medication users say they asked their doctor to prescribe a generic drug instead of a brand name drug.
- 25 percent skipped seeing a doctor when sick or injured.
In tandem with this year's U.S. study, Deloitte surveyed healthcare consumers in Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Mexico, Portugal, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Key findings among global healthcare consumers include:
- Between 40 percent and 50 percent of respondents experienced an increase in household spending on healthcare in the past year, with the exception of the United Kingdom (22 percent), Canada (29 percent) and China (37 percent).
- Consumers are mixed in assessing their household capacity to handle future healthcare costs. Least confident are consumers in Portugal (18 percent), Mexico (22 percent), Brazil (22 percent) and the United States (23 percent).
- Consumers are uniformly negative in their judgment about the success of respective governments in balancing priorities in their healthcare systems, with less than 20 percent of consumers in all countries agreeing with the proposition that the `'government is doing a good job balancing priorities in the healthcare system.”
- Consistently throughout the 12 countries surveyed, many consumers see their healthcare systems as wasteful, with redundant paperwork, individuals not taking responsibility for their own health, and defensive medicine being the top causes of wasteful spending.