The Effects of Recalling Health Insurance and Health Care Experiences on Policy Attitudes

Abstract Context: Individuals' attitudes towards health policy are affected in part by their own experiences navigating the health care system. In the United States, this experience is comprised of both interactions with insurance providers and those with care providers. This study explores the causal effect of recalling these two types of interactions on policy attitudes. Methods: In a pre-registered survey experiment of N = 1294 US adults, participants are randomly assigned to recall personal experiences with either insurance providers or health care providers, then examine how making these experiences salient shapes preferences and attitudes. Findings: Recalling insurance versus provider experiences does not affect policy attitudes as compared to a control condition. Conclusions: A popular narrative holds that Americans are deeply dissatisfied with insurance coverage, and this dissatisfaction might alter policy attitudes. However, the results of this study suggest that many (though not all) Americans are reasonably satisfied with their insurance, and that even those asked to recall insurance experiences in detail do not become more supportive of government intervention in health care. Thus, interventions seeking to leverage insurance dislike to induce attitude change may need to explicitly make negative experience salient rather than assuming that dissatisfaction is most Americans' default state.