For Doctors, the "Trump Effect" Is Strong Pessimism on Healthcare Costs, Access & Quality, while Believing Some Reforms Remain, Says Data from InCrowd

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwired - Jan 3, 2017) - As a new President-Elect takes office with plans to dismantle much of the existing Affordable Care Act (ACA), US physicians are strongly pessimistic that key reform goals of improving healthcare quality, costs, and access will be achieved under the new administration, and they are increasingly pessimistic on lowering prescription drug costs. Yet 70% believe key ACA reforms will stay intact, specifically its insurance coverage for preexisting conditions and children up to age 26 being allowed to remain on their parents' insurance plans.

Data are from an annual year-end microsurvey on physician predictions for change in the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, as performed by InCrowd, a provider of real-time market intelligence to the life sciences and healthcare firms.

70% of US physicians surveyed on December 4, 2016 believe that it is unlikely for the cost of healthcare to improve under the new presidential administration. Sixty-nine percent felt it unlikely that access to care would improve, and 60% think it unlikely that healthcare quality would improve.

Lower drug prices topped the physicians' wish lists at 54%, while 46% said making therapies more affordable was the single, most critical issue to address to meet the demands of our changing society.

• Yet for the second year in a row, when asked what changes they would realistically predict from the pharmaceutical industry, the #1 most frequent response, shared by 42% of physicians polled, was that there would be no change at all -- up from 27% last year. In fact 22% of physicians this year predicted higher drug prices in the coming year.
• Only 11% predicted there will be changes in industry regulations.
• The need for pharma manufacturing process improvements struck a chord with 20% of respondents, who said that innovating on the manufacturing process at pharma companies to improve efficiency was the most critical change needed. Bringing innovative drugs to market faster followed close behind, at 19%.

"Our data show that most US physicians are viewing the new Trump administration as negatively impacting the most significant healthcare issues facing the nation -- the need to improve healthcare and drug costs, healthcare access, and quality of care," said Diane Hayes, president and co-founder of InCrowd. "As the year progresses InCrowd will watch the fate of the ACA, track our physicians' predictions, and share our findings."

InCrowd's "2017 Predictions" survey insights were captured with InCrowd's MicroSurvey -- a real-time market research solution that saves hours in design and fielding of data -- and included responses from 150 US-based, triple-verified, board-certified physicians. Physicians responded to a 3-minute survey on December 4, 2016.

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For more information regarding InCrowd's research, please contact InCrowd.

About InCrowd

InCrowd provides a mobile microsurvey methodology and analytics engine that enables clients to reach targeted specialists and stakeholders easily among our extensive and diverse "Crowd" of healthcare professionals. These experts are available on-demand throughout the United States and around the globe, through the InCrowd platform, which is offered in 20 different languages. The brevity, speed, and simplicity of InCrowd's approach has fundamentally changed the industry by providing quality data in situations where it was previously impossible to get timely market information. Nineteen of the top 20 pharmaceutical firms have relied upon InCrowd's robust quality processes and verified experts to make fast, validated business decisions. For more information, visit www.incrowdnow.com.