Many Americans Back Higher Costs For People With Unhealthy Lifestyles

A new WSJ.com/Harris health-care poll indicates growing U.S. support for charging higher insurance premiums or out-of-pockets medical costs to people with unhealthy lifestyles.

The online survey of 2,325 U.S. adults found that 53% of Americans think it is fair to ask people with unhealthy lifestyles to pay higher insurance premiums than people with healthy lifestyles, while 32% said it would be unfair. When asked the same question in 2003, 37% said it would be fair, while 45% said it would be unfair. Healthy lifestyles were described as not smoking, exercising frequently and controlling one's weight.

From the Archive

• More People Back Higher Insurance for Smokers Than the Overweight

In the latest poll, 53% also felt it was fair to charge higher deductibles or co-payments to people with unhealthy lifestyles, while 30% said that would be unfair. In 2003, 36% said it would be fair and 47% said it would be unfair.

Among other findings: 56% agreed that people who are unemployed and poor should get the same quality health care as people who are employed and pay substantial taxes.

Here are full results of the poll:

See complete results of the survey:

"People who have healthy lifestyles, don't smoke, exercise frequently and control their weight tend to incur fewer health care costs than people with unhealthy lifestyles. Do you think it would be fair or unfair…?"

Base: All adults

* * *

"Please tell us whether you agree or disagree with the following statements about health care."

Base: All adults

Note: Percentages may not add up to exactly 100% due to rounding.

Methodology:
Harris Interactive conducted this online survey within the U.S. July 11-13, 2006, among a national cross section of 2,325 adults. Figures for age, gender, race/ethnicity, education, income and region were weighted where necessary to align with population proportions. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online. All surveys are subject to several sources of error, including sampling error (because only a sample of a population is interviewed); measurement error due to question wording and/or question order, deliberately or unintentionally inaccurate responses, nonresponse (including refusals), interviewer effects (when live interviewers are used) and weighting.

In theory, with a probability sample of this size, one can say with 95% certainty that the results have a sampling error of +/- 3 percentage points of what they would be if the entire adult population had been polled with complete accuracy.

Note: Table 3 reports trends from a survey conducted online by Harris Interactive for The Wall Street Journal's Online Edition in November 2003.