Tom Zawierucha, 58, a constructing providers employee in New Jersey, needs candidates would discuss extra about defending older Individuals from huge medical payments.
Teresa Morton, 43, a freight dispatcher in Memphis, Tennessee, with two youngsters, needs to listen to extra about how elected officers would assist working Individuals saddled with unaffordable deductibles.
Yessica Grey, 28, a buyer help consultant in Wisconsin, craves reduction 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 mentioned. “It’s simply one thing that’s all the time on my thoughts.”
Well being care hasn’t figured prominently on this more and more acrimonious presidential marketing campaign. And the economic system has usually topped the listing of voters’ considerations.
However Individuals stay intensely anxious about paying for medical care, nationwide surveys present.
Two in 3 U.S. adults in a current nationwide ballot by West Well being and Gallup mentioned they’re involved a serious well being occasion would land them in debt. The same share mentioned well being care isn’t getting sufficient consideration within the marketing campaign.
To higher perceive voters’ well being care considerations because the 2024 marketing campaign nears an finish, KFF Well being Information labored with analysis agency PerryUndem, which convened a pair of focus teams final week with 16 individuals from throughout the nation. PerryUndem, which paid to arrange the main focus teams, is a nonpartisan agency primarily based in Washington, D.C., that research public views on well being care and different points.
The main target group individuals represented a broad swath of the voters, with some favoring Republican candidates, and others Democrats. However almost all shared a typical criticism: Neither presidential candidate has talked sufficient about how they’d assist individuals struggling to pay for medical care.
“You don’t actually hear something a lot about well being care prices,” mentioned Bob Groegler, 46, who works in residential financing in japanese Pennsylvania. Groegler mentioned he’s anxious he might by no means have the ability to retire as a result of he gained’t come up with the money for to pay his medical payments.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, hasn’t supplied an in depth well being care agenda, although he criticizes present legal guidelines and mentioned he has “ideas of a plan” to enhance the 2010 Inexpensive Care Act, typically known as Obamacare.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has laid out extra detailed well being 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 pharmaceuticals, together with a $35 month-to-month cap on insulin. The laws additionally supplies further federal assist to assist Individuals purchase medical insurance by the Inexpensive Care Act, although this assist will expire until Congress and the president renew it subsequent yr.
Harris has mentioned she is going to increase the help and push for new help to Medicare enrollees who want residence care. She additionally has pledged to proceed federal efforts to relieve medical debt, a nationwide downside that burdens about 100 million individuals.
However a lot of the focus group individuals mentioned 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 imagine they’re out of contact with our actuality,” mentioned 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 may be astronomical. … I’m continuously anxious about that.”
Bobakova, who’s from Slovakia, mentioned she went again to Europe to provide 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 non-public well being protection face on common greater than $3,000 in medical payments associated to a being pregnant and childbirth that aren’t lined by insurance coverage.
Different focus group individuals mentioned they or individuals they knew had left the nation to get cheaper pharmaceuticals. The U.S. has the very best medical costs on the planet, analysis exhibits.
A number of focus group individuals, akin to Kevin Gaudette, 64, a retired semiconductor engineer in North Carolina, blamed giant hospitals, drug firms, and insurers for blocking efforts to decrease sufferers’ prices to guard their income. “I believe everyone has their finger within the pie,” Gaudette mentioned.
Martha Chapman, 64, who can also be retired and lives in Philadelphia, pointed to what she known as “company greed.” “I simply don’t suppose it’s going to alter,” she mentioned.
Within the closing days of the marketing campaign, that cynicism represents a specific downside for Harris, mentioned PerryUndem co-founder Michael Perry, who led the 2 focus teams.
Harris has tried to tell apart herself because the candidate who’s extra critical about coverage and extra sympathetic to voters’ financial struggles, Perry mentioned. And in current weeks, she’s begun airing new adverts highlighting well being care points.
However even focus group individuals who mentioned they lean Democratic appeared in charge each candidates for not addressing Individuals’ well being care considerations. “They’re not feeling listened to,” Perry mentioned.
Lots of the individuals however continued to precise hope that a problem as vital as well being care would sometime get the eye of elected officers, no matter political social gathering.
“We’re all human beings right here. We’re all individuals simply attempting to make it,” mentioned Zawierucha, the constructing providers employee in New Jersey. “If we get sick or must go in and get one thing carried out, we should always have that peace of thoughts that we will go in there and never have to fret about paying it off for the subsequent 20 years.”
“Simply give us some peace of thoughts,” he mentioned.
[Clarification: This article was revised at 11:35 a.m. ET on Oct. 24, 2024, to more clearly describe how the focus groups were organized.]
KFF Well being Information is a nationwide newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about well being points and is among the core working applications at KFF—an impartial supply of well being coverage analysis, polling, and journalism. Study extra about KFF.
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