Tom Zawierucha, 58, a building services engineer in New Jersey, wishes candidates would talk more about protecting older Americans from high medical bills.
Teresa Morton, 43, a freight dispatcher in Memphis, Tennessee, with two teenagers, wants to learn more about how elected officials would help working Americans burdened with unaffordable deductibles.
Yessica Gray, 28, a customer service representative in Wisconsin, longs for relief from the 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.”
Healthcare does not play a prominent role in this increasingly bitter situation Presidential campaign. And the economy is generally high on voters’ lists of concerns.
But Americans remain deeply concerned about paying for medical care, according to national surveys.
In a recent national survey by West Health and Gallup, two out of three U.S. adults said they fear a major health event would land them in debt. A similar proportion said healthcare was not receiving enough attention in the campaign.
To better understand voters’ health concerns as the 2024 election campaign draws to a close, KFF Health News worked with research firm PerryUndem last week to convene two focus groups with 16 people from across the country. PerryUndem is a nonpartisan firm based in Washington, DC that studies public opinion on health care and other issues.
Focus group participants represented a broad swath of the electorate, with some favoring Republican candidates and others favoring Democrats. But almost everyone shared a common complaint: Neither presidential candidate has spoken enough about how they would help people struggling to pay for their medical care.
“You don’t really hear much about health care costs,” said Bob Groegler, 46, who works in housing finance in eastern Pennsylvania. Groegler said he’s worried he may never be able to retire because he doesn’t have enough money to pay his medical bills.
Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, has not laid out a detailed health care agenda, although he has criticized current laws and said he has “concepts for a plan” to improve the 2010 Affordable Care Act, often called Obamacare.
Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat, has laid out more detailed proposals for health care, including building on a law signed by President Joe Biden to reduce patient bills.
In 2022, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which limits the amount Medicare participants 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 obtain health insurance through the Affordable Care Act. But that aid will expire unless Congress and the president renew it next year.
Harris has said he will expand aid and push for new help for Medicare enrollees who need home care. She has also pledged to continue federal efforts to reduce medical debt, a nationwide problem that burdens about 100 million people.
However, most focus group participants said they knew little about these proposals and complained that current issues such as abortion had dominated the campaign.
Many also expressed deep skepticism that either Harris or Trump would do much to ease the burden of medical bills.
“I think they are out of touch with our reality,” said Renata Bobakova, 46, a teacher and mother outside Cleveland. “We never know when we will get sick. We never know when we will fall or sprain an ankle. And the prices can be truly astronomical. … I worry about that all the time.”
Bobakova, who is from Slovakia, said she returned to Europe 10 years ago to give birth to her daughter to avoid the crippling medical debt she knew she would incur in that country. On average, parents with private health insurance coverage must pay more than $3,000 in medical bills related to pregnancy and childbirth that are not covered by insurance.
Other focus group participants said they or people they knew left the country to get cheaper prescription drugs. Research shows that the US has the highest medical prices in the world.
Several focus group participants, including Kevin Gaudette, 64, a retired semiconductor engineer from North Carolina, blamed big hospitals, drug companies and insurers for blocking efforts to reduce patient costs to protect their profits. “I think everyone has a hand in it,” Gaudette said.
Martha Chapman, 64, who is also retired and lives in Philadelphia, referred to what she called “corporate greed.” “I just don’t think that’s going to change,” she said.
In the final days of the campaign, that cynicism posed a particular problem for Harris, said PerryUndem co-founder Michael Perry, who led the two focus groups.
Harris tried to portray herself as the candidate who took politics more seriously and had more understanding of voters’ economic problems, Perry said. And in the last few weeks she has started doing it Broadcasting new advertisements Highlight healthcare issues.
But even focus group participants who said they leaned toward Democrats appeared to blame both candidates for failing to address Americans’ health problems. “They don’t feel listened to,” Perry said.
Still, many participants continued to express hope that an issue as important as health care would one day capture the attention of elected officials regardless of political party.
“We are all human beings here. We’re all people just trying to make it,” said Zawierucha, the building engineer in New Jersey. “If we get sick or need something done, we should have the peace of mind that we can go there and not have to worry about paying it off for the next 20 years.”
“Just give us some peace of mind,” he said.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism on health issues and is one of the core operating programs of KFF – the independent source for health policy research, surveys and journalism.