Keep Me Alive, But Make It A Bargain

People enjoy eating food. They don’t enjoy being hospitalized. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised, then, that many respondents to a new Harris Poll decry hospital fees as “unreasonably high,” while few are so indignant about packaged-food prices (see the chart). Marketers in other businesses should be grateful to the healthcare sector for soaking up so much of consumers’ antipathy. The number of respondents who think cars are unreasonably pricey has fallen significantly since 2000, when it stood at 48 percent; so has the number who think clothing is unduly expensive (22 percent in 2000).