A weekly roundup of public health news
More than a third of Americans can’t afford to pay for quality health care, a new national poll finds.
The affordability gap also widened for people with low incomes and people of color.
About 91 million people said they could not access quality health care if they needed it today because of cost, according to the West Health-Gallup Healthcare Affordability Index survey, which was conducted in November and December 2024. The rate is a new high.
Ability to pay for care varied significantly by annual household income. On the higher end, only 8% of households earning $180,000 or more annually said they could not pay for care, along with 16% of households that earn $120,000 to $180,000. For households earning the U.S. median income at the time of the study — around $82,600 — 37% said they could not afford care.
In contrast, 64% of households earning less than $24,000 annually could not pay for care, along with 57% of households earning $24,000 to $48,000.
People at the low end of the income scale also experienced the highest increase in inability to pay. At the bottom two tiers — from zero dollars to $48,000 in income — households experienced a 12% increase in not being able to pay for health care. For the other income groups, the highest increase was only 4%, representing households earning $48,000 to $90,000. The gap is the widest ever recorded, according to survey researchers.
The ability to pay for care also varied by race and ethnicity. About 52% of Hispanic Americans and 46% of Black Americans said they could afford quality health care, the survey found.
Tim Lash, president of West Health Policy Center, called the increase in unaffordability “disturbing” and predicted it “is likely to continue and even accelerate.”
U.S. import taxes could hinder prescription drug supply
U.S. tariffs on Canadian products could cause shortages and other supply problems for prescription drugs used by millions of Americans, a new study in JAMA cautions.
Released March 31, the study says recent trade tariffs levied by the Trump administration raise concerns about drug availability, affordability and supply stability. More than 400 medications sold in the U.S. market depend on Canadian manufacturing, totaling $3 billion in annual U.S. sales, researchers found. A tariff of 25% would add $750 million to costs.
While U.S. law limits drug manufacturing increases from being passed on to some patients, such as people covered by Medicare, manufacturers may still adjust production or distribution, the researchers said. If the U.S. extends its tariffs to other countries that manufacture a greater quantity of drugs for the American market, such as India, the effects could worsen, they said.
Some of the drugs that would be affected by the tariffs on Canada include those that have faced shortages in the past.
President Donald Trump levied a 25% tariff on Canadian goods imported into the U.S. on Feb. 1, citing a “flow” of fentanyl into America. On April 2, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to end the national fentanyl emergency declaration in a rebuke to Trump’s move, though the measure is unlikely to be taken up by the House.
Wealth doesn’t stop Americans from dying earlier than European counterparts
People in the U.S. are more likely to die earlier than their peers in Europe, even if they’re wealthy, a new study in the New England Journal of Medicine finds.
At every level of wealth, U.S. death rates were higher than those in European comparison countries in the study, which included France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Hungary, Spain and a host of other high-income nations. America’s most well-off residents had shorter average lifespans than the wealthiest Europeans, according to the study, which looked at death rates over a 10-year period. Survival rates for some of the most wealthy Americans were on par with the poorest Europeans in Germany, France and the Netherlands.
The gap between rich and poor people was also much larger in the U.S. than in Europe, researchers found. Of all groups in the study, the poorest Americans had the lowest survival rates.
Weaker social safety nets and limited access to care in the U.S. may account for some of the disparities, the researchers suggested.
Other recent public health news of note:
• Pollution from the January wildfires in Los Angeles worsened indoor air quality in homes more than two miles away from the burn zone, according to preliminary data released March 14 by the Los Angeles Fire Human Exposure and Long-Term Health Study. The 10-year, multi-university study is assessing pollutants left after the Eaton and Palisades wildfires and their impacts on health.
• Black Americans have been disproportionately impacted by drug overdose deaths, with mortality rates rising faster among the group than white Americans, a new study in JAMA Network Open finds. Black men had the highest death rate from drug-related overdoses, at 23 per 100,000, and experienced greater increases in deaths from 2010 to 2020.
• As storms carry snow to the Rocky Mountains, they bring mercury and other contaminants from mines in the area along with them, according to new research in Environmental Pollution. Researchers traced metal contaminants in snow in the northern Rockies to dust from mines in Idaho, Montana and other nearby states.
• A new review in Oxford Open Climate Change confirms that fossil fuels are driving not only climate change, but also environmental injustice, biodiversity loss, plastic pollution and related harms to human health.
• Exposure to nitrogen dioxide air pollution — such as from motor vehicle emissions, power plants, and oil and gas production — during pregnancy can lead placentae to detach in utero, new research in Environmental Health Perspectives finds.
• A new study in JAMA Network Open reports people who have a health-related social risk — such as financial strain, housing instability and food insecurity — are 21% more likely to visit an emergency department than people without such risks.
• Increasing the minimum wage at the state level can decrease food insecurity rates in households with children, according to new findings in JAMA Network Open.
• A new study in JAMA Cardiology says rates of cardiovascular health risks — such as hypertension, obesity and diabetes — are significantly higher among people who live in rural areas.
• Nearly 2,000 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine called on the Trump administration to “cease its wholesale assault on U.S. science” in a March 31 public statement. The administration’s firings, funding cuts, censorship and other actions are devastating research in the U.S. and will cost the nation its scientific edge, they said.
• A group of organizations, led by the American Public Health Association, sued the Trump administration April 2 in response to the abrupt cancelation of research grants funded by the National Institutes of Health earlier this year. The move to eliminate grants on topics and populations “disfavored” by the administration, such as vaccine hesitancy or health disparities, was conducted without regard to scienctific reasoning or due process, the lawsuit says.
The Watch is written by Michele Late, who has more than two decades of experience as a public health journalist.