"Share Your Experience"
Responses to the On-line Questionnaire
- Questionnaire (PDF only)
- Responses (Excel file)
- Responses (tab-delimited text)
- Responses (PDF - 1.2 MB)
Instructions for Accessing These Data
From January through August of 2006, the Citizens’ Health Care Working Group asked visitors to its web site to respond to the following:
We all have different experiences getting health insurance or in seeking health care. Sometimes these are good experiences, while other times they are not. We may meet very special providers or encounter new and innovative practices. Other times the American health care system disappoints us. Please tell us what has worked well or hasn't work well for you or your family.
We received over 500 written responses to this request via the Internet, many of which were strongly reminiscent of what we heard in community meetings across the United States. The responses for individuals who gave us permission to publish their comments are provided here, but names and addresses have been removed. These descriptions are a mosaic of varied and sincere reflections of the experiences that Americans are having with the health care system. Some describe the successes of our health care system, but many illustrate serious failures of the system that have led people to the conclusion that fundamental changes are needed.
The responses are available here in both Microsoft Excel and Adobe Acrobat formats. Both formats provide ways to read the comments received; in Excel, “clicking” on a cell will cause the information to pop up in full at the top of the screen. The Excel format may be more easily sorted or searched for analytical purposes; the Adobe Acrobat version is easier to read.
* To view documents posted on this web site as PDF files or in other formats, please read our Format help page.