43% of Americans Won't Get A Flu Shot, But Many Think it Should Be Mandatory

NEW YORK, Jan. 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Despite doctors recommending flu shots for nearly all healthy individuals, a startling 43% of Americans will not get a flu shot this year according to a new ValuePenguin.com survey.

Yet, the cost of not getting a flu shot is steep. The average American spent an average of $495 on doctor's visits for the flu in 2017–2018, nearly 11 times more than the cost of the flu shot without insurance. The flu also led to 810,000 hospitalizations and 61,000 deaths in just the 2017–2018 flu season. So why aren't more Americans getting a flu shot?

• Younger Women Are Less Likely To Get Flu Shots. The willingness to get a flu shot increases with age among women, while men were more consistent as they aged. Older women planned on getting flu shots at a rate 134% higher than women aged 18 to 22.
• Americans Worry About the Effectiveness And Safety Of the Flu Shot. 74% of survey respondents who did not want the flu shot, cited "Don't think it works," "Flu shot makes me sick" or "Concerned about what's in the shot" as their top reasons to avoid the flu shot. Gen X respondents were most likely to feel this way.
• Cost is a Concern for Uninsured Americans. Uninsured Americans were more than 6.5 times more likely than people with insurance to decline getting a flu shot over cost reasons.
• Should the Flu Shot Be Mandatory? Opinions were mixed on whether schools and businesses should require the flu shot. 66% agreed that flu shots should be mandatory for public school students; but only 55% felt that employers should require the same.

To understand Americans' attitudes towards the flu shot, ValuePenguin.com commissioned Qualtrics to conduct an online survey of 1,226 Americans, with the sample base proportioned to represent the general population. To view the full report, visit: https://www.valuepenguin.com/flu-shot-survey

About ValuePenguin.com: ValuePenguin.com, part of LendingTree (NASDAQ: TREE), is a personal finance website that conducts in-depth research and provides objective analysis to help guide consumers to the best financial decisions. ValuePenguin focuses on value, assessing whether the return of a particular decision is worth the cost or risk of that option, and how this stacks up with the other possible choices they may have. For more information, please visit www.valuepenguin.com, like our Facebook page or follow us on Twitter @ValuePenguin.

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SOURCE ValuePenguin.com

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