As President Obama prepares for his prime-time news conference tonight (at 7 Central), when he is expected to address health reform among other topics, a health-care consumer confidence index developed by the University of Minnesota shows slight improvement in June.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Care Consumer Confidence Index (RWJF Index) measures "barriers in access to health care" including delaying needed visits to the doctor because of costs.

The 3-month-old index rose 3.6 points in June to 102.3. The index, which has a baseline of 100, was developed by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC) at the University of Minnesota. Consumers are now interviewed about health-care access as part of the University of Michigan’s long-running Surveys of Consumers.

SHADAC Director Lynn Blewett cautions that because the index is new researchers expect some fluctuation in the first few months. Still, the reform debate likely had some influence on the 500 consumers across the nation who were interviewed in June.
 
"I do think that people are aware of the work that Congress is doing on health reform and there might be some optimism that health reform could get done," Blewett said today. "This optimism might be reflected in a more positive outlook about the future. This is what is unique about having an ongoing index -- we can observe change in how people feel about health care over time."

These findings stand out to her in June’s survey:

"While overall there was a shift in the index, there are still almost one in four adults (23.6 percent) who are worried about losing their health insurance coverage," she said.

"We also see one in five adults delayed care because of costs (22.4 percent); skipped care because of cost (20.7 percent) and did not fill a prescription because of cost (20.1 percent)," she said. "Cost continues to be a barrier to getting needed health care in the United States."

Here’s the full report [pdf].