Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
7 Figures: NPR/Harvard Survey on Patients’ Perspectives on Health Care
7 Figures: NPR/Harvard Survey on Patients’ Perspectives on Health Care
Mar 28, 2026 3:37 PM

A new survey by NPR and Harvard University reports the self-reported experiences of health care consumers across the country, in states that have (New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon) and have not (Florida, Kansas, Texas) expanded Medicaid, and in one (Wisconsin) that did not have to expand Medicare.

Here are seven figures you should know from the report:

1. When asked about its effects on the people of their state, more than a third (35 percent) of adults say they believe national health reform has directly helped residents, while a similar proportion (27 percent) say they believe the law has directly harmed residents. On a more personal level, most (56 percent) Americans do not believe the Affordable Healthcare Act (i.e., Obamacare) has directly impacted them. Among those who believe it had an impact, more say it has directly hurt them (25 percent), as individuals, than those who say national health reform has directly helped them (15 percent).

2. One-third (33 percent) of adults in the U.S. believe the health care they receive is excellent and just under half (46 percent) say their care is good, while just over one in six (18 percent) say it is fair or poor.

3. Nearly three-fourths (74 percent) of adults in the U.S. believe the health care they receive has stayed about the same over the past two years, while less than a quarter (23 percent) believe it has gotten better or worse.

4. Most adults in the U.S. (60 percent) say the cost they personally pay for their health care is reasonable, while just under three in ten (29 percent) disagree, saying the amount they pay is unreasonable.

5. Even though most (55 percent) Americans reflect positively on their state’s health care system, saying it is excellent or good, few give their state top marks. Just one in six (17 percent) say the health care system in their state is excellent, while more than two in five (42 percent) adults in the U.S. say it is fair or poor.

6. Only 38 percent of adults in the U.S. had positive things to say about the country’s health care system, and fewer than one in ten (9 percent) gave it top marks. In contrast, more than three in five (61 percent) U.S. adults say the nation’s health care system is fair or poor.

7. One in seven (14 percent) adults in the U.S. says it has gotten harder to see a doctor in the past two years, whereas nearly three-quarters (74 percent) say their ability to see a doctor has stayed about the same. In contrast, just one in ten (10 percent) say it has gotten easier to see a provider in recent years.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
Live 8: Saving Africa?
Much has been written in recent weeks about Live 8, a series of concerts that will take place on July 6 in London, Paris, Berlin, Rome and Philadelphia. The name refers not only to the original Live Aid concerts that took place in 1985, but is also a reference to the G8 meetings that will be taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland at the same time as the concerts. G8 organizers are planning for massive protests which have been urged on...
Last week
Power corrupts…and upsets babies. Just in case anyone missed (or didn’t miss) my posting last week, I was on vacation following the birth of my first child, a son, on May 30 (Memorial Day). Owen Flynn Ballor 9 lbs., 2 oz. 20.5 inches 5/30/05 10:10 pm ...
Colson speaks at Calvin Seminary Spring Banquet
Colson speaks at Calvin Seminary’s Spring Banquet. Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, spoke at Calvin Theological Seminary’s Spring Banquet, endorsing the school’s Dutch neo-Calvinist heritage. “Calvin Theological Seminary is an underappreciated asset in the evangelical world. There’s nothing the evangelical world needs more than a bracing dose of Kuyperian theology,” he said. The speech also marked the announcement of the establishment of the Charles W. Colson Presidential Chair at the seminary. Thanks to a major gift from the Richard...
Men without chests
In the spirit of C. S. Lewis’ classic The Abolition of Man ing available online, I pass along this story: Macho man is an endangered species…fashion industry insiders say. A study along these lines led by French marketing and style consultants Nelly Rodi was unveiled to Fashion Group International during a seminar Tuesday on future strategy for the fashion industry in Europe. Asks Pierre Francois Le Louet, the agency’s managing director, “We are watching the birth of a hybrid man....
‘Monkey Business’
In the latest issue of the New York Times Magazine, the article “Monkey Business,” by Stephen J. Dubner and Steven D. Levitt examines economist Keith Chen’s research with capuchin monkeys and money. Here’s another case of science, in this case economics, being used to “prove” the continuity between (and therefore equivalency of) humans and animals. The implicit message is that we are really not all that different from our fellow creatures, nor that special. This seems almost absurd, but it’s...
‘God Makes No Mistakes’
‘God Makes No Mistakes’ You may not know it, but Loretta Lynn is a pretty good theologian. She’s so good, in fact, that some contemporary theologians, open theists like Clark Pinnock, for example, could take some lessons in orthodoxy. The lyrics to a song off her most recent record, Van Lear Rose, that illustrates her high view of God. Here are the words to “God Makes No Mistakes”: Why, I’ve heard people say Why is this tree bent Why they...
Google’s memory
Google recently surpassed Time Warner as the world’s top media stock. Google provides services to about 19 million users per day. People go to Google to find things, participate in discussions via online forums, to check and send email, driving directions, and a host of other services. That is a lot of information about a lot of people…where does it all go? Apparently, Google keeps it all! What is the cost of this data collection? How much of our own...
An interview with Karen Woods
The Roundtable on Religion & Social Policy interviewed Acton’s Karen Woods, director of the Center for Effective Compassion (CEC) this week. Woods spoke about the work of the CEC, including the Samaritan Award, and also gave her perspective on the federal Faith-Based and Community Initiative. She says in part, With welfare reform in ’96, and certainly the waivers that preceded that in certain states, there was a change in the way that we looked at social services. Suddenly, work was...
The culture’s animating values
A Dove Foundation report released this week shows a link between family-friendly movies and profitability. es away from the Dove report with a sense that the movie industry is beginning to recognize a profit opportunity in producing more morally robust movies,” writes Rev. Robert A. Sirico. Read the full text here. The Dove Foundation report is available here (PDF). ...
From academic to apoplectic
The article I referenced a couple weeks ago about the trends in conservative think tanks and philanthropy noted that the first phase was ushered in by F. A. Hayek. In some ways, the arc that Piereson sketches follows a change in the relationship that Hayek observed between what he termed “academics” and “intellectuals.” In his 1949 essay, “The Intellectuals and Socialism,” (PDF) Hayek defines an intellectual in this way: The term intellectuals, however, does not at once convey a true...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved