\n Forgoing food. Cutting back on utilities. Driving less. Borrowing money.\n <\/p>\n
\n These are the sacrifices that tens of millions of people are making to afford their health care expenses, according to a West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare in America survey released Thursday.\n <\/p>\n
\n Roughly one-third of respondents \u2013 equivalent to more than 82 million Americans \u2013 said they have had to cut back on at least one daily living expense to cover their health care bills, according to the survey of nearly 20,000 adults, which was conducted from June through August.\n <\/p>\n
\n The report is among the latest examples of the affordability crisis<\/a> plaguing Americans who are struggling to afford the cost of living amid stubbornly high prices for food, housing<\/a>, utilities<\/a> and other necessities. And it comes at a time when health care spending is on the rise, in part because the country\u2019s health is on the decline, said Tim Lash, president of West Health, a nonprofit group focused on health care delivery and affordability.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt\u2019s not just that health care is expensive,\u201d Lash said. \u201cIt\u2019s that we use more and more health care as Americans.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Sheila Nesbit, who recently retired after a long career as a librarian, is among those having to make tough choices. She didn\u2019t realize that Medicare would cover less than her job-based insurance plan did. So when her doctor recommended new orthopedic shoe inserts costing roughly $250 to help with pain while walking, she decided not to buy them, and she\u2019s also looking for discount cards to help her purchase a $90 medicine that Medicare doesn\u2019t cover.\n <\/p>\n \n What\u2019s more, she sometimes skips lunch and doesn\u2019t always take her medicines for cholesterol, asthma and high blood pressure so she can save money. And she\u2019s lowered the thermostat at home, opting to put on a sweater and huddle under two blankets to ward off the cold.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI never thought I\u2019d be living like this,\u201d said Nesbit, 65, who lives in the Chicago suburb of Park Forest.\n <\/p>\n \n Although the uninsured and those lower on the income ladder have to make more tradeoffs, they aren\u2019t the only ones having trouble affording their health care expenses.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cEven middle-class and upper-middle-class Americans are still having to make decisions like cutting back on utilities, driving less, borrowing money to pay for health care,\u201d Ellyn Maese, research director for the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare, told CNN.\n <\/p>\n \n Health care costs have also prompted tens of millions of Americans to postpone major life events in recent years, according to a separate West Health-Gallup Center survey conducted between October and December. Just over a quarter of respondents said they delayed surgical or medical treatment, while 14% held off buying a new home, and just under a tenth put off retirement.\n <\/p>\n \n The situation will probably get worse in the coming months and years; millions more people are expected to become uninsured<\/a> after Republican lawmakers last year approved more than $1 trillion in cuts to federal support for health care<\/a> and after Congress allowed the enhanced Affordable Care Act premium subsidies<\/a> to expire at the end of last year.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIf people are losing their insurance,\u201d Maese said, \u201cwe\u2019ll see more people facing even more of these tradeoffs.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Forgoing food. Cutting back on utilities. Driving less. Borrowing money. These are the sacrifices that tens of millions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325475,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[134,527,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-325474","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-healthcare","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-healthcare","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325474"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325474\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325475"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}