Tom Zawierucha, 58, a constructing companies employee in New Jersey, needs candidates would speak extra about defending older People from large medical payments.
Teresa Morton, 43, a freight dispatcher in Memphis, Tennessee, with two youngsters, desires to listen to extra about how elected officers would assist working People saddled with unaffordable deductibles.
Yessica Grey, 28, a buyer help consultant in Wisconsin, craves aid from excessive drug costs and medical payments which have pushed her and her husband deep into debt. “How a lot are we going to pay?” she stated. “It is simply one thing that is at all times on my thoughts.”
Well being care hasn’t figured prominently on this more and more acrimonious presidential campaign. And the economy has typically topped the checklist of voters’ considerations.
However People stay intensely anxious about paying for medical care, nationwide surveys present.
Two in 3 U.S. adults in a latest nationwide poll by West Well being and Gallup stated they’re involved a serious well being occasion would land them in debt. The same share stated well being care is not getting sufficient consideration within the marketing campaign.
To raised perceive voters’ well being care considerations because the 2024 marketing campaign nears an finish, KFF Well being News labored with research firm PerryUndem to convene a pair of focus teams final week with 16 folks from throughout the nation. PerryUndem is a nonpartisan agency primarily based in Washington, D.C., that research public views on well being care and different points.
The main focus group contributors represented a broad swath of the citizens, with some favoring Republican candidates, and others Democrats. However almost all shared a standard grievance: Neither presidential candidate has talked sufficient about how they’d assist folks struggling to pay for medical care.
“You do not actually hear something a lot about well being care prices,” stated Bob Groegler, 46, who works in residential financing in jap Pennsylvania. Groegler stated he is anxious he could by no means be capable to retire as a result of he will not manage to pay for to pay his medical payments.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, hasn’t provided an in depth health care agenda, although he criticizes present legal guidelines and stated he has “ideas of a plan” to enhance the 2010 Inexpensive Care Act, typically referred to as Obamacare.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has laid out extra detailed health care proposals, together with constructing on laws signed by President Joe Biden to decrease sufferers’ payments.
In 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Discount Act, which limits how a lot Medicare enrollees should pay out-of-pocket for prescribed drugs, together with a $35 month-to-month cap on insulin. The laws additionally gives further federal assist to assist People purchase medical insurance by means of the Inexpensive Care Act, although this assist will expire except Congress and the president renew it subsequent 12 months.
Harris has stated she’s going to increase the help and push for new assistance to Medicare enrollees who want residence care. She additionally has pledged to proceed federal efforts to relieve medical debt, a nationwide drawback that burdens about 100 million people.
However a lot of the focus group contributors stated they knew little about these proposals, complaining that hot-button points like abortion have dominated the marketing campaign.
Many additionally expressed deep skepticism that both Harris or Trump would do a lot to lighten the burden of medical payments.
“I consider they’re out of contact with our actuality,” stated Renata Bobakova, 46, a instructor and mom exterior Cleveland. “We by no means know after we’ll get sick. We by no means know after we’ll fall down or sprain an ankle. And costs actually might be astronomical. … I am continually anxious about that.”
Bobakova, who’s from Slovakia, stated she went again to Europe to present beginning to her daughter 10 years in the past to keep away from crippling medical debt she knew she’d incur on this nation. Dad and mom with personal well being protection face on common more than $3,000 in medical bills associated to a being pregnant and childbirth that are not coated by insurance coverage.
Different focus group contributors stated they or folks they knew had left the nation to get cheaper prescribed drugs. The U.S. has the best medical costs on this planet, research shows.
A number of focus group contributors, resembling Kevin Gaudette, 64, a retired semiconductor engineer in North Carolina, blamed massive hospitals, drug firms, and insurers for blocking efforts to decrease sufferers’ prices to guard their earnings. “I believe all people has their finger within the pie,” Gaudette stated.
Martha Chapman, 64, who can be retired and lives in Philadelphia, pointed to what she referred to as “company greed.” “I simply do not suppose it should change,” she stated.
Within the closing days of the marketing campaign, that cynicism represents a selected drawback for Harris, stated PerryUndem co-founder Michael Perry, who led the 2 focus teams.
Harris has tried to differentiate herself because the candidate who’s extra critical about coverage and extra sympathetic to voters’ financial struggles, Perry stated. And in latest weeks, she’s begun airing new ads highlighting well being care points.
However even focus group contributors who stated they lean Democratic appeared guilty each candidates for not addressing People’ well being care considerations. “They don’t seem to be feeling listened to,” Perry stated.
Most of the contributors however continued to specific hope that a problem as vital as well being care would sometime get the eye of elected officers, no matter political occasion.
“We’re all human beings right here. We’re all folks simply attempting to make it,” stated Zawierucha, the constructing companies employee in New Jersey. “If we get sick or need to go in and get one thing finished, we must always have that peace of thoughts that we are able to go in there and never have to fret about paying it off for the following 20 years.”
“Simply give us some peace of thoughts,” he stated.
KFF Health News is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is without doubt one of the core working packages at KFF — the unbiased supply for well being coverage analysis, polling and journalism.