What Battleground Voters Are Saying About Healthcare Affordability

Valentine said he went from having a $500 annual deductible to a $3,000 deductible to being uninsured due to job loss.

Skyrocketing insurance premiums were just the start for Valentine and many other battleground-state voters. Many spoke about access, quality of care, and feeling disrespected by the healthcare establishment that demands more and more of their income.

Yet it’s unclear how much, if at all, that frustration will impact the 2026 midterm elections.

Though Democrats had vowed to make it a centerpiece of their election strategy, most now talk about affordability in general terms, along with housing, groceries, and gasoline.

Republicans have focused on structural fixes such as increasing price transparency and lowering prescription drug prices.

Will any of that translate into votes in November? Here’s what we heard from battleground voters.

Anxiety Over Rising Costs

Anita Robertson, 40, a single mother of four from the Hampton Heights neighborhood of Milwaukee, recently lost her state-sponsored insurance because of her income. The roughly $37,000 she earned from self-employment put her over the limit.

That forced her back to the commercial insurance market, where she found the prices much higher than a few years ago.

Robertson said she paid around $120 a month for an Obamacare plan in the early 2010s. Now the best option she can afford is $270 a month for a high-deductible plan.

“I’m responsible for the rest,” she said. “I’m scared to go to the doctor.”

The average family premium for employer-sponsored health insurance was about $13,700 in 2010. Last year, it was nearly $27,000.

Medical spending for an American family of four is nearly $10,000 per year now, including premium contributions and out-of-pocket spending. That’s almost double the amount in 2013, as reported by Peterson-KFF Health Systems Tracker.

The rapid increase in costs has done more than squeeze the household budget. It has kept some people from seeking treatment, even if they have some type of insurance.

Zach Holsch, 30, of Milwaukee’s Third Ward, is a caseworker who sees a lot of people struggling to afford healthcare.

“Healthcare costs are always a concern for my clients,” he said. “Some are afraid to seek medical treatment due to the unknown cost.”

Dyami Harris, 25, of Battle Creek, Michigan, said his father’s copay is $100 for every doctor visit. “He has avoided going to the doctor because he dreaded paying that $100,” Harris said.

Sticker Shock From Prices

David Sanford, 57, and his wife, Cathy, 54, of Marshall, Michigan, are young retirees who depend on the ACA Marketplace for health insurance. The Marshalls are feeling the loss of the enhanced premium tax credits, which expired in 2025.

“We’re paying five times as much as two years ago,” Cathy said.

Given their high-deductible plan, the couple is just as aware of the high prices for routine medical services, which they usually must pay in full.

“Blood tests are way up,” David said, referring to routine tests recently provided to their young adult daughter. They were stunned by the $1,200 price tag.

The couple began looking out of state when their local hospital quoted a price of $5,000 for an MRI. “That was nine times more than we paid in Indiana,” Cathy said.

Medicare allows up to $455 for an MRI provided at an outpatient surgery center.

Five years ago, Valentine said he paid about $2,500 out of pocket for medical treatment that included a four-day hospital stay. That was with health insurance.

Now jobless and with no insurance, Valentine said he paid nearly the same amount for four stitches in a hospital emergency unit.

“The price they quote you is just to get what they can from the insurance company,” Valentine said.

Budget Drives Voting

Nearly all voters The Epoch Times spoke with said that healthcare affordability would influence their vote in November. How much depended largely on how directly it affected their personal finances.

Some voters were aware of the rising costs of healthcare but were less concerned because their own costs were under control.

A retired veteran in Kalamazoo, Michigan, said he had no thoughts about healthcare affordability. “The Veterans Administration takes care of my healthcare,” he said.

“I haven’t really noticed,” said Shane Sheridan, 26, of Kalamazoo, when asked about rising healthcare costs. Sheridan said he’s in good health and enrolled in a low-premium, high-deductible health plan.

Younger and relatively healthy voters, as well as those on Medicaid or Medicare Advantage plans, seemed less concerned about health costs as a personal issue.

Yet most said they considered it an important election issue because of how it affected others.

“I’ve known people who haven’t gotten the treatment they probably needed because of the cost,” Sheridan said, adding that he considers it one of his top three priorities for this election.

Those facing higher household costs generally rated healthcare affordability higher as a voting concern.

Jason Reeves, 44, of Kalamazoo, named healthcare affordability as his top election issue for 2026. Reeves and his wife have an 11-year-old child with special needs. He said their out-of-pocket spending for healthcare is about $15,000 a year.

Few Solutions

Despite their frustration over cost and access, few voters named a particular voting strategy. The few who did mentioned either a Medicare for All approach or a public option, which is a public health plan that people can opt into.

For others, healthcare costs melded into other issues including housing, fuel, and grocery prices, and good governance in general.

“Gas and rent are more of a problem,” said Alisha Hardman, 33, of Kalamazoo.

Lauren McMullan, 37, of Kalamazoo, said, “Healthcare is always massively important.”

Yet she couldn’t say where it ranked as a campaign issue. “It’s hard to say,” McMullan said, “because so many other issues are intertwined with it.”

Likewise, most candidates who mention the issue seem either to speak in generalities or nibble around the edges of the problem.

Some have proposed expanding the services covered by Medicare, combatting fraud, increasing price transparency, or capping premiums and out-of-pocket expenses.

In Michigan, three Democrats campaigning on universal healthcare won primary congressional elections.

However, a fourth was defeated by an opponent who advocated making healthcare more affordable by building on the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid. And Wisconsin Democrat Francesca Hong, an advocate of single-payer healthcare, lost her bid for the gubernatorial nomination.

Broken System

Beyond affordability, voters delivered the message that the healthcare establishment feels broken. Focused more on profit and efficiency than patient care and riddled with middlemen who take money out of the system, they say it no longer delivers the value they remember.

“Look at 40 years ago. Now, the middleman is taking a lot out of it. The care suffers,” Reeves said.

Jeanette Solis, 24, of Battle Creek, said she’d paid about three times as much out of pocket for the birth of her newborn as compared with her first child, who was born nine years ago. “It’s crazy to say it, but sometimes I wonder if it’s worth having insurance,” Solis said.

Greg Pierce, 65, of Battle Creek, said healthcare had changed for the worse over the last decade. “You paid into it all these years, and you’ve still got to fight to get it,” he said.

“You don’t expect the local hospital to take advantage of you like that,” David Sanford said after being surprised by a high medical bill. “If you don’t ask, they won’t tell you the price.”

Cathy Sanford noted the increasingly crowded schedules of doctors. “You have to be your own advocate now. More people are having battles to get in to see the doctor.”

And the long waits are no guarantee of being properly evaluated, Harris said. “They rush you in and out in 10 minutes.”

Others spoke of feeling like they were being upsold with add-on services every time they visit a provider, or feeling that providers didn’t take time to listen to their concerns.

Inaiah Allen, 42, of Chicago summed it up this way: “Ten years ago it was more mom-and-pop. They knew your name. Now they just look at the insurance card.”