American’s number one medical fear: Losing health care access

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Access to healthcare and its cost remain Americans’ top medical concerns, two years after President Barack Obama’s reforms were passed, a poll said Wednesday.

Forty-two percent of those questioned in the Gallup poll said access or cost were the biggest problems the country faces in terms of health care.

Obama’s reforms, which were upheld this year by the Supreme Court, oblige people to have health insurance. But the reform will not take full effect until 2014, which might help explain the lingering worries, Gallup said.

Access was the most urgent public health problem for 23 percent of those questioned, while cost was problem number one for 19 percent.

Not far behind was obesity, which 16 percent of those polled cited as the most urgent public health problem. Back in 1999, only one percent said the same.

The more acute jitters over obesity go hand in hand with a rise in the demographic, which has doubled between 1980 and 2008.

In fourth place, was cancer, health concern number one for 13 percent of Americans.

In 2001, bio-terrorism held the top slot as the number one public health worry, while from 1987 to 1999 it was AIDS.

This year’s poll was conducted from November 15-18 among 1,015 adults and had a margin of error of four percentage points.

[Stethoscope via Shutterstock]