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Health Care Costs Rank as Top Concern Among Americans

Obamacare
AP
April 28, 2016

The cost of health care is the greatest financial concern among American families with 15 percent of U.S. adults citing the issue as their top economic worry, according to a new Gallup poll.

Anxiety about low wages ranked as the second most important financial concern while debt and college expenses followed.

The findings, released Monday, arrived the same day as a Pew Research Center study reporting that more Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act than those who approve.

More than half of Americans—54 percent—oppose President Obama’s linchpin health care law while only 44 percent support it.

Health insurance companies are expected to substantially raise premiums in the next year because of steep financial losses on the marketplace, The Hill reported Monday. Those companies set their premiums too low in 2014 when their plans began, forcing them now to increase health prices to recoup losses.

UnitedHealth for example, the nation’s largest health insurer, announced last week it would drop participation in its Obamacare exchanges down to only a handful of states because of financial losses.

In a report released last month, the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association found that new Obamacare enrollees paid 22 percent higher in medical costs than people received coverage through their employer.