Yesterday Maggie posted on how economic insecurity and health care are in fact related issues. I agree 100 percent, and wanted to take the opportunity to show that the American people concur. Health care costs and economic insecurity aren’t in competition for public mindshare—according to poll responses at least, the two are coupled.

Every year Gallup asks voters “Are you generally satisfied or dissatisfied with the total cost of health care in this country?” Check out the results from 2001 through 2007 below.

The trend toward being more worried about price of health care is clear. And inherently, cost worries are economic issues.

But the connection between economics and health care goes well beyond this logical argument—you can actually see the two linked in polls. Take a look at the graphs below (click both to enlarge them), from a Kaiser Family Foundation report published last month. Since 2004, Kaiser has been asking respondents how worried they are about a set of potential problems. The first set of bars shows that flagging incomes and high health care costs are the two major concerns that people say they are “very worried” about. This makes sense: the less confident you are about your purchasing power, the more worried you’ll be about buying essentials like health coverage.

Over time, Kaiser poll data confirms the same theme.  Below is a
graph of the two worries that top the 2007 bar chart, with data from
2004 (when Kaiser started doing these surveys) to the newest iteration
in December of last year.

Once again, economic insecurity and worries about health care costs travel together. And in the past year, as the price of fuel, gasoline and
food have climbed, people have become even more worried that their
pay-checks aren’t keeping up with inflation. The necessities of
life—including health care—are all becoming more expensive.

This all seems painfully obvious, but it’s something that we miss when
polls impose artificial divisions amongst issues by using crude
categories like “the economy” and “health care.” Think about how little
it tells you if people are more worried about their economic security
than their ability to afford health insurance, or vice versa. Anyone
who feels like they can’t afford the necessities is going to be worried
about paying for health care; anyone who’s worried about paying for
health care is worried about their economic security. It’s the chicken
and the egg.

Obviously polls have to compartmentalize complex issues for practical
reasons. But the economy and health care are not dueling issues.
Worries about income and health care costs go hand in hand, not head to
head. And they make for a double-whammy that is most definitely on the
minds of voters.

So, to second Maggie’s sentiment: let’s understand that health care is
an economic issue.

Indeed, cost containment lies at the very heart of
health care reform. In recent years, the cost of health care has been
rising two or three times faster than median wage increases. Unless we
can break that spiral, more and more middle-class Americans won’t be
able to afford health care. And we certainly won’t be able to stretch
the blanket to cover everyone. If health care spending continues to
climb at its current pace, the nation’s health care bill will swell by
more than 25 percent in the next four years—without even addressing the
problem of the uninsured.

Reformers should know that framing health care reform as economic
progress—and not just as medical progress—is important and likely to be
effective. And political candidates should realize that just because
people are worried about their incomes, it doesn’t mean that health
care is receding from the public agenda—just the opposite, in fact.

In the days ahead, Maggie is going to be talking more about the
“basics” of Health care spending: where our health care dollars go, and
where cuts can be made without diluting the quality of care. Another
example of how economics and health care go together.