Voters fret high medical bills are being ignored by presidential rivals – The Mercury News

By Noam N. Levey, KFF Health News (TNS)

Tom Zawierucha, 58, a building services worker in New Jersey, wishes candidates would talk more about protecting older Americans from big medical bills.

Teresa Morton, 43, a freight dispatcher in Memphis, Tennessee, with two teenagers, wants to hear more about how elected officials would help working Americans saddled with unaffordable deductibles.

Yessica Gray, 28, a customer support representative in Wisconsin, craves relief from high drug prices and medical bills that have driven her and her husband deep into debt. “How much are we going to pay?” she said. “It’s just something that’s always on my mind.”

Health care hasn’t figured prominently in this increasingly acrimonious presidential campaign. And the economy has generally topped the list of voters’ concerns.

But Americans remain intensely worried about paying for medical care, national surveys show.

Two in 3 U.S. adults in a recent nationwide poll by West Health and Gallup said they’re concerned a major health event would land them in debt. A similar share said health care isn’t getting enough attention in the campaign.

To better understand voters’ health care concerns as the 2024 campaign nears an end, KFF Health News worked with research firm PerryUndem to convene a pair of focus groups with 16 people from across the country. PerryUndem is a nonpartisan firm based in Washington, D.C., that studies public views on health care and other issues.

The focus group participants represented a broad swath of the electorate, with some favoring Republican candidates, and others Democrats. But nearly all shared a common complaint: Neither presidential candidate has talked enough about how they’d help people struggling to pay for medical care.

“You don’t really hear anything much about health care costs,” said Bob Groegler, 46, who works in residential financing in eastern Pennsylvania. Groegler said he’s worried he may never be able to retire because he won’t have enough money to pay his medical bills.

Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, hasn’t offered a detailed health care agenda, though he criticizes current laws and said he has “concepts of a plan” to improve the 2010 Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare.

Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has laid out more detailed health care proposals, including building on legislation signed by President Joe Biden to lower patients’ bills.

In 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which limits how much Medicare enrollees must pay out-of-pocket for prescription drugs, including a $35 monthly cap on insulin. The legislation also provides additional federal aid to help Americans buy health insurance through the Affordable Care Act, though this aid will expire unless Congress and the president renew it next year.

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