The high cost of health care has long been a concern for Georgians and a frequent topic of conversation among policymakers and industry leaders. A recent survey conducted by Altarum’s Healthcare Value Hub, in consultation with Georgians for a Healthy Future, spotlights surprising data about exactly how much Georgians struggle with health care costs. Altarum’s Consumer Healthcare Experience State Survey (CHESS) found that Georgians struggle with all aspects of health care affordability, including paying for doctors’ visits, procedures, and prescription medications.
These affordability struggles affect Georgians’ entire financial well-being, from taking on medical debt to being unable to pay for necessities like food and utilities.
Most Georgians struggle to afford their health care
The Georgia CHESS revealed that almost 7 in 10 (68%) respondents struggled with health care affordability burdens in the past 12 months. These burdens included delaying or forgoing care due to cost (58%), struggling to pay medical bills (50%), and being uninsured due to high premium costs (48%). The survey also found that 4 in 5 (80%) of respondents worried about affording care in the future, especially care related to aging or medical emergencies. Unsurprisingly, those with incomes below $50,000 struggled the most to afford care. However, health care cost challenges also affected families higher up the income ladder, with over half (56%) of respondents with incomes of $100,000 or more struggling to afford care.
Additionally, over half of Georgians (55%) are worried about the high price of prescription drugs, and over one-third (38%) have experienced a hardship due to the cost of prescription drugs. These hardships have led Georgians not to fill a needed prescription, cut pills in half, or skip a dose of medicine. Like other health care affordability challenges, lower-income households struggle more to afford their medication; families making less than $75,000 per year were most likely to ration their prescription medications due to cost. However, one-third of households making over $100,000 per year also reported rationing medication their doctor prescribed.
Georgia’s health on the line
Delaying or forgoing needed health care, whether preventative or to address a specific condition, can lead to immediate poor health outcomes and health problems down the line that could have been prevented with timely care. Across the state, Georgians suffer from high rates of heart disease, asthma, and pulmonary disease, resulting in more than 200,000 years of life lost. Often these health problems can be managed with regular care, but when people are afraid to access health care due to cost, their conditions become more difficult and expensive to treat down the road.
Many Georgians also experience mental health and substance use challenges in their lifetime, but Georgia ranks close to last for access to mental health care. These Georgians are often forced to pay out-of-pocket for their care and must go without lifesaving mental health treatment when they cannot afford the cost.
Elected officials must lower health care costs
The survey found strong, bipartisan support for legislative action to address high medical costs. Georgians want their policymakers on both sides of the aisle to address high costs across all areas of health care – from coverage to care to prescription drugs.
In the 2022 legislative session, several bills show promise to address high health care costs and improve access to care for Georgians. The largest of these bills is the Mental Health Parity Act, which would address the cost of mental health care by requiring insurance coverage of mental health services to be equal to coverage of physical health services. Other promising bills would lower costs by reinforcing protections against surprise medical bills, require more transparency in prescription drug pricing, and remove burdensome prior authorization requirements for medications used to treat chronic illnesses.
These legislative efforts demonstrate lawmakers’ commitment to lowering the cost of health care for their constituents and all Georgians. Now is the time to get these bills across the finish line and put them on the Governor’s desk for his signature.
However, the work does not end this Sine Die. Consumers need more protection from high health care costs and medical debt. Lawmakers can apply the CHESS results now and in the 2023 legislative session.
Georgians for a Healthy Future encourages a comprehensive, wide-ranging plan of solutions including ensuring all Georgians have health coverage regardless of income; incentivizing hospitals to provide more generous financial assistance and discontinue unfair debt collection practices; capping prescription drug cost increases at the rate of inflation; slowing mergers & consolidations among health industry stakeholders; continuing to invest in Georgia’s all-payer claims database; and other system-level changes so consumers can better understand and afford the costs of their health care.
Whitney Griggs is a health policy analyst with Georgians for a Healthy Future
