The Employee Benefit Research Institute has been conducting surveys of employees' attitudes toward high deductibles for about a decade. Those kinds of health plans are still less popular than traditional kinds of health plans, like PPOs and HMOs -- but the margin isn't as lopsided as it was a decade ago. [...]

Fronstin says the differences could be due to the "80-20" rule -- 20 percent of people account for 80 percent of health care spending. If they're in that group, they're spending the whole deductible, and are understandably upset. If not, the deductible may not matter as much because they're not using it.