Full Analysis Summary
Rising Health Care Affordability Concerns
A new West Health–Gallup survey finds a sharp rise in Americans' worry about affording health care, with 47% of adults saying they were concerned they would not be able to afford care in the coming year—the highest level recorded since tracking began in 2021.
The survey also documents growing anxiety about prescription drug costs, which rose from 30% in 2021 to 37% in 2025.
It shows an increase in the share saying health care costs cause "a lot of stress," rising from 8% in 2022 to 15% in 2025.
Both reports emphasize that these shifts reflect broad, intensifying financial pressure tied to health needs going into 2026.
Coverage Differences
Emphasis/Narrative
NBC News (Western Mainstream) frames the finding as part of a detailed West Health–Gallup survey with multiple trend metrics (prescription worry, stress, delayed care), while Medical Xpress (Western Mainstream) reiterates the headline 47% figure and presents it as evidence that “millions of Americans face growing challenges” — a slightly more summarizing, consequence-focused framing. NBC presents more granular trend statistics; Medical Xpress foregrounds the national takeaway.
Tone/Severity
Both sources present the rise as serious, but NBC includes specific stress and delay metrics that underline daily hardship (e.g., stress doubling, delays/skips), while Medical Xpress emphasizes the scale by converting the trends into a broader statement about millions affected.
Medication Cost Disparities
Prescription affordability emerges as a central and numerically variable concern across the reports.
Medical Xpress highlights a record-high 20% (one in five) who said they or someone in their household were unable to pay for prescription medications in the past three months.
NBC's writeup documents rising worry, reporting 37% in 2025.
It also shows state variation: 15% in the top 10 states couldn't pay for prescriptions in the past three months versus 29% in the bottom 10.
These differences indicate both rising national worry and uneven, state-level experiences of medication unaffordability.
Coverage Differences
Numeric discrepancy/Focus
Medical Xpress (Western Mainstream) emphasizes the 20% recent inability-to-pay-prescriptions metric as a national record-high, whereas NBC News (Western Mainstream) presents both an increase in worry about prescription costs (30% to 37%) and state-tiered outcome measures (15% top‑10 vs. 29% bottom‑10). Medical Xpress uses the record-high prescription nonpayment stat to underscore scale; NBC contextualizes prescriptions within broader state disparities.
Narrative Detail/Omission
Medical Xpress focuses on the national magnitude and consequences, while NBC gives granular state-level differences and compares top and bottom state averages; this means NBC supplies more geographic detail that Medical Xpress omits in its summary.
Healthcare access and affordability
Affordability concerns lead to care delays and skipped services, with NBC reporting that roughly one in three adults delayed or skipped care in the past year because of cost and rates highest in Texas, Montana, and Alaska (about 41–43%).
Respondents also reported non-cost barriers: 55% cited long wait times and 27% cited work schedules, indicating access problems are not solely financial.
Medical Xpress reinforces the link between cost and health by describing prescription nonpayment and affordability worries as threats to millions' health and financial well-being.
Coverage Differences
Tone and breadth
NBC (Western Mainstream) details both cost-driven behavior (delays/skips) and non-cost access barriers (wait times, work schedules), giving a broader view of access impediments. Medical Xpress (Western Mainstream) reiterates the health-financial linkage with a focus on how these trends amount to widespread strain for millions, but it provides fewer operational details about non-cost barriers.
Geographic emphasis
NBC supplies state-level measures of skipped care (highest in Texas, Montana and Alaska), which Medical Xpress does not replicate, making NBC the source for locating where skipping care is concentrated.
Health coverage affordability survey
The survey highlights sharp differences between states in health coverage access and affordability.
NBC lists top-ranked states for access and affordability as Iowa, Massachusetts, Washington, D.C., and Rhode Island, and lowest-ranked states as Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and Alaska.
NBC warns affordability could worsen if enhanced ACA subsidies expire or if proposed Medicaid work requirements lead to coverage losses.
Medical Xpress frames the findings as evidence of a national affordability crisis that leaves millions exposed but does not include the same policy detail or state rankings that NBC provides.
Coverage Differences
Policy and detail omission
NBC (Western Mainstream) explicitly reports warnings from the study’s authors and outside experts that policy changes—expiration of enhanced ACA subsidies or proposed Medicaid work requirements—could worsen affordability and coverage; Medical Xpress (Western Mainstream) stresses the national scale of harm but does not cite those specific policy risks in the excerpt provided.
Geographic granularity
NBC provides detailed state rankings and comparisons between top and bottom state groups; Medical Xpress focuses on national prevalence and consequences without reproducing the state-by-state ranking in the excerpt.
Sources and Limitations
Note on sources and limitations: both items provided here draw on the same West Health–Gallup tracking.
NBC's account supplies the full set of trend metrics, state breakdowns, and policy warnings, while Medical Xpress distills the findings into national-scale takeaways and the record-high 20% prescription nonpayment figure.
Only these two article snippets were provided for this task, and differences identified above reflect how these outlets emphasized different elements of the same survey.
Where excerpts are silent (for example, Medical Xpress does not reproduce NBC's detailed state rankings or policy warnings in the passages given), I have not assumed additional facts.
Coverage Differences
Source availability/constraint
Only two sources were provided (NBC News and Medical Xpress), both reporting on the West Health–Gallup findings; that limits cross-type comparison (e.g., West Asian vs. Western Alternative) requested in the prompt. I explicitly note this limitation rather than infer missing coverage.