A painful, pre-existing condition – obsession over the cost of medical care and health insurance – makes the latest announcements of rising insurance rates a potent political issue, according to a survey that polled patients throughout New York state this year. The 2016 Empire State Healthcare Survey, conducted by the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures through the university’s Survey Research Institute, polled 800 New Yorkers of all backgrounds and political inclinations between February and April 2016. Overall, two-thirds thought the cost of care (39 percent of respondents) and the American health insurance system and policy (27 percent) were the “most important problems in U.S. health care.”