Surveys: Consumers Pass Health Care Buck

But the Kaiser survey results also show that U.S. consumers continue to be suspicious of efforts to control health care costs. When the researchers asked about health concerns, they found that 27% of respondents were very worried that the quality of health care they receive would get worse, and 34% were very worried that their health plans might be more concerned about saving money for the plan than about what was best for the patients.

Some employers have been trying to control costs by shifting to “consumer-driven” plan designs that give consumers incentives to consider cost when seeking care.

But only 46% of the employees who participated in the Towers Perrin survey believe that it is fair for employers to ask employees to pay more out of pocket.

Workers under age 35 were even less likely to support the concept of sharing cost increases than other employees: only 28% of the younger workers polled thought it was fair for employers to ask them to absorb some of the annual increases in health care costs.