Battleground-state voters across the political spectrum say their health care costs have skyrocketed this year. They are avoiding doctors because they cannot afford the expenses from their pocket. They feel forced to choose between paying their insurance or their rent – and they’re choosing the rent.
This is everything that Democrats warned would happen when Republicans cut Medicaid and let Obamacare subsidies expire last year. But those same voters aren’t blaming Republicans alone.
These are among the findings of focus groups that the Democratic-aligned firm Navigator Research conducted last week with people who have either experienced premium increases or are left uninsured.
Voters’ reactions show that Democrats, who have been attacking President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers over rising health care costs as a central part of their midterm strategy, still have some work to do in getting their message across.
“Democrats need to tell a bigger story and connect the dots – that the Democrats were the party that fought for the ACA and are fighting to protect the ACA as Republicans are pursuing it like death by nearly 1,000 paper cuts,” said Melissa Tofanian, managing director of Navigators.
Margie Omero, a principal at the Democratic polling firm GBAO, who worked with Navigators on the focus groups, said Democrats “need to be aggressive” in highlighting the consequences of the Republicans’ health care cuts. “Just because you’ve said something 10 times doesn’t mean you don’t need to say it 90 more times.”
Democrats took advantage of Republican efforts to dismantle Obamacare to score sweeping victories in the 2018 midterms.
The people behind the focus groups believe Democrats can do it again in 2026 — as long as they focus less on specific policy fights and more on the bigger picture that Republicans are raising costs around.
“Are you going to pay for food or rent? Or are you going to pay for health care? That wasn’t a conversation in 2018,” Tofanian said. Democrats, he said, have to make it so that they’re not “communicating in a narrow way on increasing subsidies or just protecting the ACA, that we’re thinking about the entire American health care system and connecting the dots around why care is so expensive, why it’s not accessible and how can we make it better?”
Polling shows voters are feeling the brunt of rising insurance costs, and they’re Trust the Democrats more than the Republicans to handle this","Add":{"Target": :"New","Property":(),"url": :"https://navigatorresearch.org/views-on-health-care-in-the-battleground-and-beyond/","_Identification": :"0000019d-d3b7-d930-a7fd-ffbf8d030000","_Type": :"33ac701a-72c1-316a-a3a5-13918cf384df"},"_Identification": :"0000019d-d3b7-d930-a7fd-ffbf8d030001","_Type": :"02ec1f82-5e56-3b8c-af6e-6fc7c8772266"}”>Trust the Democrats more than the Republicans to handle this. A recent Gallup poll found that access to affordable health care was voters’ top household concern. One-fifth of respondents in an April Politico poll said access to health care was too difficult, while health insurance was one of the top four most challenging things for people, behind grocery and housing costs and utility bills.
The focus groups put those concerns on full display. An independent in Michigan who voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris in 2024 said the price of her plan through the ACA marketplace has quadrupled without subsidies and lamented the huge expense. An independent candidate from Georgia, who won’t vote in 2024, said she’s keeping costs down by avoiding the doctor unless absolutely necessary.
A Republican Trump voter from North Carolina who recently became uninsured said she chose food and rent over health care — and worries what it will cost her every time she coughs. And a Republican Trump voter from Arizona warned that Medicaid cuts were a bad idea.
Few voters were aware that the GOP-controlled Congress had allowed increased Obamacare subsidies to expire and that Democrats had tried to stop it. And some of them blamed Republicans for rising costs.
But many said they felt both sides had let them down as they struggled to navigate a complex and expensive health care system. He also pointed the finger at insurance companies and Big Pharma for raising prices.
“It’s a good reality check for us living in D.C. to understand that people are not living and breathing every day, no matter how intense the fighting has been over the last six months or year,” Tofanian said.
