Healthcare Anxiety Is Rising, And Money Is The No. 1 Reason

Survey: Americans Trust Their Doctors, Just Not The Price Of Seeing Them

Money worries have followed Americans right into the exam room. A new survey of 2,000 U.S. adults who saw a doctor in the past year found that rising unease about healthcare has less to do with needles or waiting rooms and more to do with the bill that arrives afterward. Among people whose anxiety about healthcare has gone up, the biggest driver was not a diagnosis or a symptom. It was cost.

More than four in ten respondents (43%) said their anxiety about healthcare has increased, and when asked why, 54% pointed to the general cost and affordability of care as their top concern. That single worry outranked everything else researchers asked about, painting a picture of patients who are nervous less about their health and more about what staying healthy will do to their bank accounts.

Commissioned by PatientPoint and conducted by Talker Research as part of PatientPoint’s annual Patient Confidence Index, the survey set out to measure how confident Americans feel about the care system around them. What it captured instead was a standoff: a public increasingly rattled by the price of care, yet still holding tight to the people who deliver it.

Cost Sits at the Center of Healthcare Anxiety

Affordability was not a lone complaint. Respondents who felt more anxious stacked several money-related fears on top of one another. Inflation showed up for 41% of them, and 34% named the specific worry of being able to afford treatments. Broader forces landed too, with 39% citing government policy changes and 28% saying they simply do not trust the health system as much as they used to.

Put together, those numbers describe a cost problem that feels bigger than any one medical visit. For many respondents, a trip to the doctor now carries a running mental tally: the copay, the prescription, the possibility of a test that insurance might not fully cover. Layered on top are forces no single patient controls, from the price of everyday goods to shifting rules in Washington, which helps explain why the worry feels heavier than a single line on a statement.

Even so, that worry is not evenly spread. Fewer than half of all respondents reported rising anxiety in the first place, meaning the sharpest cost fears cluster among a distinct group of patients rather than the whole survey pool. For that group, though, the pressure is real enough to reshape decisions. Anxiety of this kind does not stay in the head. It changes behavior at the worst possible moment.

Healthcare Anxiety Is Changing What Patients Do

Nearly half of patients (47%) said their healthcare-related concerns have caused them to delay preventive care, the routine visits meant to catch problems early rather than treat them late. One caveat stands out: the survey ties that delay to healthcare concerns in general, not to cost alone, even though cost was the worry respondents named most often. Whatever the exact trigger, the effect looks the same, with some patients putting off care while their unease sits unresolved.

Emotion tracked closely with behavior. Asked to describe how they feel about the direction of healthcare, only 22% chose “excited.” Far more reached for uneasy words, with 30% saying they feel “nervous” and 15% saying “scared.” A system that leaves more people frightened than hopeful is one where some patients may hesitate before booking a visit at all.

Trust in a Doctor Outlasts Trust in the System

For all that worry, one relationship held firm. Even as anxiety about the broader industry climbed, 84% of respondents said they still trust their own providers and the information those providers share. Distrust of the system, in other words, did not spread to the person in the white coat across the room.

Kyle Barich, Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer at PatientPoint, framed that gap as the survey’s central lesson. “This research highlights the essential role trusted provider relationships play in building patient confidence,” he said. “While patients have concerns about the healthcare system overall, they continue to rely on their healthcare providers for trusted guidance. That trust becomes even more important as healthcare continues to evolve.”

That split matters for anyone trying to reach anxious patients. It leaves individual providers in an unusually trusted position when patients have questions about their care, even as confidence in the broader system softens.

AI Splits the Waiting Room by Generation

Cost was the loudest worry, but technology stirred its own unease. Two-thirds of respondents (67%) said they are concerned that artificial intelligence will strip the personal touch out of healthcare. When asked whether they feel excited about AI’s potential in medicine, fewer than half (47%) said yes.

Age drew the sharpest line. Younger respondents leaned optimistic about AI in healthcare, with 64% of Gen Z and 63% of millennials hopeful about the possibilities, compared with 48% of Gen X and just 32% of baby boomers. For the patients drawn to it, the appeal was practical: 27% pointed to faster diagnoses as the top reason, followed by more personalized treatment plans (21%), seeing a doctor more quickly (15%), and easier, faster access to health information (15%).

Even skeptics left the door open. Nearly half of respondents (49%) said technology in their doctor’s office would improve their experience, a sign that patients will accept new tools when those tools clearly serve their care. Barich drew the same boundary. “Technology has tremendous potential to improve healthcare experiences, but only when it strengthens, not replaces, the relationship between patients and providers,” he said. “Patients are open to innovation that makes care more personalized, accessible and easier to navigate while preserving the human connection they value most.”

Both threads, the money and the machines, point back to the same nerve. Americans want care they can afford and a human they can trust to guide them through it. Right now the survey suggests the cost is testing the first and the technology is testing the second, while the doctor in the room remains the steadying presence patients are least willing to give up. Should affordability keep climbing the list of fears, the risk worth watching is not that people stop trusting their doctors. It is that rising cost anxiety could make some of them more hesitant to seek the care those doctors provide.

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