Hi. I'm Sam Whitehead, a KFF Health News reporter based just outside of Atlanta. If you run into me at a party, I may talk your head off about Medicaid work requirements and will try to coolly and casually slip into conversation that I play guitar in a dad band (see what I did there?). Email me news tips at swhitehead@kff.org.
Join me and my colleague Renuka Rayasam for an Ask Me Anything on Reddit's r/politics on Nov. 2 to discuss our Priced Out reporting and answer your questions about healthcare costs. You can start submitting questions at 10 a.m. ET and we'll start answering them at 1 p.m.
By Sam Whitehead
Ahead of the midterm election on Tuesday, many voters say they’re stressed about being priced out of healthcare.
In mid-September polling from KFF, as many American adults said they were worried about seeing a doctor or paying for prescriptions as said they were worried about affording high fuel prices.
KFF Health News has spent this year gathering the stories of people coping with high healthcare costs while feeling a financial squeeze in other parts of their lives — buying groceries, keeping their lights on, paying rent. People said they’re forgoing insurance coverage, rationing their medications, cutting back on doctor visits, and putting off health procedures.
Bill McAdams, 45, of Florida, believes the stress of dealing with a massive medical bill after one stroke led to his second stroke. Janet Marx, 56, sold her childhood home in Connecticut to make room for health expenses. Lynn Ludaway, 40, in Illinois, considered divorcing her husband to help qualify for aid to cover the costs of her chronic illness.
“We’re not talking about the uninsured or those who are low-income who are struggling now,” said Rebecca Kirch, executive vice president at the National Patient Advocate Foundation. “Now it’s become an all-of-us issue.”
Health economists and policy researchers say it’s pretty simple why U.S. healthcare costs are so high: The prices that doctors, hospitals, and drugmakers charge are high, especially relative to the prices in other wealthy nations.
What's less clear is exactly what to do about it. American healthcare costs are expected to continue to grow faster than the overall economy. U.S. health spending hit nearly $5.3 trillion in 2024, or 18% of the nation’s gross domestic product, up from $3 trillion a decade earlier, according to federal data.
Voters aligned with both parties agree that something is wrong. Nine in 10 Democratic respondents to that KFF poll and three-quarters of Republican ones said the U.S. healthcare system needs either a complete overhaul or major changes.
But voters won’t be able to bring that about immediately with their ballots this year.
Some Democratic candidates have pushed “Medicare for All” on the campaign trail, arguing that centralized government insurance could reduce the financial burden on individuals.
Some Republicans have offered policies not usually promoted by their party, such as limiting what nonprofit hospitals can charge and trying to cap drug prices.
But big solutions remain elusive, perhaps because the health sector has spent more than $14 billion lobbying members of Congress in both parties since 1998. That’s according to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks money in U.S. politics.
People are left to make tough choices — about what healthcare they can afford and which candidates to select in the voting booth.
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