CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – An end-of-year survey done by Mason-Dixon Polling by the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association shows Charlottesville area and Shenandoah Valley residents with highly favorable views of hospital care they have received here, but highly unfavorable views of health insurance and pharmaceutical companies.
Julian Walker with the VHHA told Cville Right Now the numbers are, in fact, very uniform whether you look at regional or statewide breakdowns, “What we see is when you look at cross tabs, even when you break it down by region or partisan identification, these numbers tend to hold true.”
82% of respondents in the “central Virginia/Shenandoah” region viewed Virginia’s hospitals favorably with 13% unfavorable.
The statewide percentages were 81% versus 16% respectively.
When the survey asked, “In general, is your opinion of health insurance companies favorable or unfavorable?”, this region’s favorable rating went way down to 34% while 60% were “unfavorable.”
Again, the numbers were close to the statewide 34% and 62%.
Opinions on pharmaceutical companies were even more dismal.
Only 16% of “central Virginia/Shenandoah” respondents viewed pharmaceutical companies favorably, while 77% rated unfavorable.
The numbers respectively statewide were 18% and 75%.
Even though pharmaceutical companies rated lower than insurance companies in favorability, respondents blame health insurance companies mostly for rising health care costs.
In the Charlottesville area and the Valley, out-of-pocket costs like deductibles and co-pays are the largest concern at 38%, insurance premiums second at 26%, while prescription drug costs were the third largest concern at 18%.
That top three tracked statewide, though prescription drugs seemed to steal some percentage points from the co-pay concern, at 32%, 27%, and 15% respectively.
When it came to what respondents blamed the most for rising health care costs, insurance companies got the largest “central Virginia/Shenandoah” percentage at 39% with government the secondary blame at 24%.
Prescription drugs were third at 18%.
Across Virginia, the top three were in the same order respectively at 35%, 21%, and 17%.
Walker said respondents showed concerns about two issues involved health insurance in that some 300,000 Virginians stand to lose Medicaid coverage over eligibility changes from the “big beautiful bill”.
“And, as sort of a secondary but related issue to that, we also asked about the enhanced premium tax credits because they were implicated in the federal government shutdown debate which came in the wake of the ‘big beautiful bill’ passage, and what we found is essentially 4-to-1 support for Congress to take action to extend those tax credit,” Walker said.
