As many Americans who voted for Donald Trump, Jason Rouse hopes that the president’s return will mean lower prices for gas, groceries and other basics.
But Rouse is looking for the federal government for relief from a particular point of pain: high cost of health care. “Prices are just ridiculous,” said Rouse, 53, a retired Michigan firefighter and a paramedical who has voted for Trump three times. “I would like to see a lower lid on what I have to pay out of pocket.”
Government regulation of healthcare prices was a heresy for most Republicans. GOP leaders strongly opposed the 2010 affordable care law, which included the limits of the government for the cost of patients. More recently, the party fought the legislation signed by former President Joe Biden to cover the prices of drugs.
But as Trump begins his second term, many of the voters who sent him back to the White House welcome a stronger government action to reinforce a health care system that many Americans perceive as out of control, show polls.
“This idea that the government should simply hold its hands, even when things are tough for people, have lost its glow,” said Andrew Seligsohn, president of the public agenda, a non -profit organization that has studied public stance for government and health care.
“We wander all over the country with a set of old, outdated frames for what the ordinary democrats and ordinary Republicans like,” he said.
Republican voters strongly support federal limits on prices charged by drug companies and hospitals, patient medical accounts and restrictions on how healthcare providers can seek people.
Even Medicaid, the state-federal insurance program that Republican Congress leaders see dramatically reduce, is considered favorable by many GOP voters, such as Ashley Williamson.
Williamson, 37, a mother of five in eastern Tennessee, who voted for Trump, said Medicaid provided critical help when her mother -in -law needed home care. “We couldn’t take care of it,” Williamson said. “He fell in. He ensured that he had taken care.”
Williamson, whose family gets covered through her husband’s employer, said she would worry much about large cuts in Medicaid funding that could endanger the Americans needed.
For years, democratic ideas for health care have reflected a wide skepticism about the government and fears that the government would threaten patients’ access to doctors or medicines for life.
“The discussions 10 to 15 years ago were around the choice,” said Christine Matthews, a democratic poll that worked for many GOP politicians, including former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. “Free market, without the government limit or taking your health care.”
Matthews and colleague Pollster Mike Perry have recently convened and paid several catering teams with Trump voters, including Rouse and Williamson, observed by KFF Health News.
Skepticism for the government remains among the Republicans. And ideas such as the shift of all Americans to a single government health plan, similar to “Medicare for All”, are still non -starting for many GOP voters.
But as tens of millions of Americans are led to debt with medical accounts that do not understand or cannot afford, many reassessing their tendency to seek free markets rather than the government, said Bob Ward, whose company Fabrizio Ward, who was asked by his 20s.
“I think most people see this and say that the market is broken and so they are willing for someone to enter,” he said. “The deck is stacked against peoples.”
In a recent national survey, Fabrizio Ward and Hart Research, who have been conducting democratic candidates for decades, found that Trump’s voters were more likely to accuse health insurers, drug companies and high -cost hospital systems.
Sarah Bognaski, 31, an administrative assistant in New York’s Upstate, is one of the many Trump voters who say they are frustrated the profitability of the healthcare industry. “I don’t think there is any reason that many of the expenses should be as high as they are,” Bognaski said. “I think it’s just from pure greed.”
The high cost of healthcare had a direct impact on Bognaski, which was diagnosed four years ago with type 1 diabetes, a condition that makes it dependent on insulin. He said he is ready to have the government to go out and cover what patients pay for medicinal products. “I would like to see more arrangement,” he said.
Charles Milliken, a retired car engineer in western Virginia, who said he supported Trump because the country “needs an entrepreneur, not a politician”, expects the new president to go even further.
“I think he is going to put a ceiling on what insurance companies can charge, what doctors can charge, what hospitals can charge,” said Milliken, 51, who recently had a heart attack that left him with more than $ 6,000.
Three -quarters of Trump’s voters support government boundaries in what hospitals can charge, according to Ward polls.
And about half of the Trump voters in a recent KFF poll said that the new administration should prioritize the expansion of the number of drugs whose price is determined by negotiation between the Medicare Federal Program and the Pharmaceutical Companies, a program launched by Biden.
Perry, who convened dozens of catering groups with voters for health care in recent years, said that support for government prices are even more remarkable as the regulation of medical prices is not at the top of the agenda. “It seems to be like a groundswell,” he said. “They have come to this decision on their own, and not to any politician who leads them there, that something must be done.”
Other forms of government regulation, such as the limits of medical debt collections, are even more popular.
About 8 out of 10 Republicans supported a $ 2,300 ceiling on how many patients could pay a year for medical debt, according to a 2023 survey by Perry’s construction company Perryundem. And 9 out of 10 favored a ceiling for interest rates charged for medical debt.
“These are the ones I would consider non-brainers, politically,” Ward said.
However, GOP political leaders in Washington have shown historically little interest in government limits on what patients pay for medical care. And as Trump and his allies in Congress are beginning to form the agenda of healthcare, many Republican leaders have expressed more interest in cutting the government than to expand its protections.
“There is often a huge disconnection,” Ward said, “between what happens in Capitol Hill cafes and what happens on family tables all over America.”
We would like to talk to today’s and former staff from the Ministry of Health and Human Services or its components, who believe that the public should understand the impact of what is happening within the federal bureaucracy. KFF Health news message about the signal in (415) 519-8778 or Contact here.
