Tom Zawierucha, 58, a constructing providers employee in New Jersey, needs candidates would discuss extra about defending older Individuals from massive 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 assist 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’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 typically topped the record of voters’ issues.
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 stated they’re involved a serious well being occasion would land them in debt. The same share stated well being care isn’t getting sufficient consideration within the marketing campaign.
To higher perceive voters’ well being care issues 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 folks from throughout the nation. PerryUndem, which paid to prepare the main target teams, 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 members represented a broad swath of the voters, with some favoring Republican candidates, and others Democrats. However practically all shared a standard criticism: Neither presidential candidate has talked sufficient about how they’d assist folks struggling to pay for medical care.
“You don’t 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’s anxious he could by no means have the ability to retire as a result of he gained’t have the funds 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 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 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 prescribed drugs, together with a $35 month-to-month cap on insulin. The laws additionally offers extra federal support to assist Individuals purchase medical health insurance by means of the Inexpensive Care Act, although this support will expire until Congress and the president renew it subsequent yr.
Harris has stated she’s going to develop the help and push for new help to Medicare enrollees who want house care. She additionally has pledged to proceed federal efforts to relieve medical debt, a nationwide downside that burdens about 100 million folks.
However many of the focus group members 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 imagine they’re out of contact with our actuality,” stated Renata Bobakova, 46, a instructor and mom exterior Cleveland. “We by no means know once we’ll get sick. We by no means know once we’ll fall down or sprain an ankle. And costs actually might be astronomical. … I’m always 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. Mother and father with personal 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 members stated they or folks they knew had left the nation to get cheaper prescribed drugs. The U.S. has the very best medical costs on the planet, analysis exhibits.
A number of focus group members, corresponding to 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 feel all people has their finger within the pie,” Gaudette stated.
Martha Chapman, 64, who can also be retired and lives in Philadelphia, pointed to what she referred to as “company greed.” “I simply don’t assume it’s going to vary,” she stated.
Within the closing days of the marketing campaign, that cynicism represents a specific downside for Harris, stated PerryUndem co-founder Michael Perry, who led the 2 focus teams.
Harris has tried to tell apart herself because the candidate who’s extra severe about coverage and extra sympathetic to voters’ financial struggles, Perry stated. And in current weeks, she’s begun airing new adverts highlighting well being care points.
However even focus group members who stated they lean Democratic appeared accountable each candidates for not addressing Individuals’ well being care issues. “They’re not feeling listened to,” Perry stated.
Most of the members nonetheless continued to specific hope that a difficulty as vital as well being care would sometime get the eye of elected officers, no matter political celebration.
“We’re all human beings right here. We’re all folks simply making an attempt to make it,” stated Zawierucha, the constructing providers employee in New Jersey. “If we get sick or must go in and get one thing executed, 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 following 20 years.”
“Simply give us some peace of thoughts,” he stated.
[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.]
