2019 Prescription Drug Survey

AARP asked likely voters ages 50 and older about their experience with prescription medication and their thoughts on proposals for reducing prescription drug costs.

Older voters are keenly interested in the prescription drug price issue:

• The vast majority surveyed (80%) say they take at least one prescription medication, and seven in ten (72%) say they are concerned about the cost of their medications.
  
  
• A majority (60%) say prescription drug costs are unreasonable and many indicated they have or will need to make trade-offs to afford their medications.
  
  
• Virtually all the voters surveyed (regardless of party affiliation) support various proposals for reducing prescription drug costs, including making it easier for generic drugs to come to market (93%) and allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug companies for lower prices (92%).

This survey was conducted by the nonpartisan and objective research organization NORC at the University of Chicago on behalf of AARP. For this national survey, data were collected using the AmeriSpeak Panel. AmeriSpeak, the probability-based panel of NORC, is designed to be representative of the U.S. household population.

Surveyed online and by telephone between February 15 and March 4, 2019, the total sample of 2,025 adults included a nationally representative sample of adults ages 50-plus (1,218), with multicultural oversamples of African American/Blacks (463 total) and Hispanic/Latinos (384 total). A portion of the multicultural samples came from the national survey sample. The survey was conducted in English and Spanish.

For more information, please contact Cheryl Lampkin at clampkin@aarp.org. For media inquiries, contact AARP’s Media Relations Office at media@aarp.org. 

Suggested Citation:

Lampkin, Cheryl. 2019 Prescription Drug Survey Fact Sheet: Likely Voters. Washington, DC: AARP Research, March 2019. https://doi.org/10.26419/res.00295.001

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