People occupy signs in front of the Republican presidential candidate, former American president Donald Trump holds a campaign rally on November 4, 2024 in Raleigh, in North Carolina.
SOMODEVILLA / GETTY Images chip
hide
tilting legend
SOMODEVILLA / GETTY Images chip
Like many Americans who voted for Donald Trump, Jason Rouse hopes that the president’s yield will lead to a drop in gas, grocery prices and other essential elements.
But Rouse turns to the federal government to relieve a particular point of pain: high costs of health care.
“The prices are simply ridiculous,” said Rouse, 53, a retired firefighter from Michigan and an ambulancer who voted for Trump three times. “I would like to see a lower ceiling on what I have to pay.”
Government regulations for health care prices were heresy for most Republicans. GOP leaders were fiercely opposed to the 2010 affordable care law, which included government limits on patient costs. More recently, the party fought a legislation signed by former president Joe Biden Ceiling prescription drug price.
But while Trump begins his second term, many voters who sent her back to the White House welcome a more robust government action to brake a health care system than many Americans perceive as beyond control, according to polls.
“This idea that the government should simply keep its hands, even when things are difficult for people, has somehow lost its brilliance,” said Andrew Seligsohn, president of the public agenda, a non -profit organization that studied public attitudes on government and health care.
“We wander across the country with a set of former executives overwhelmed on what ordinary Democrats and ordinary Republicans love,” he said.
Jason Rouse of Alpena, Michigan, Sarah Bognaski from Clayton, New York and Charles Milliken from New Martinsville, Virginie-Western, all voted for President Donald Trump in November. They would like to see the new administration puts limits that health care providers can charge patients.
Jason Rouse; Sarah Bognaski; Charles Milliken
hide
tilting legend
Jason Rouse; Sarah Bognaski; Charles Milliken
Republican voters strongly support the federal limits of prices billed by pharmaceutical companies and hospitals, ceilings on patient medical invoices and restrictions on how health care providers can pursue people on medical debt, indicate several surveys.
Same Medicaid, the state federal insurance program that the leaders of the Republican Congress envisage To cut radicallyis seen favorably by many voters of the GOPLike Ashley Williamson.
Williamson, 37, mother of five in the east of Tennessee who voted for Trump, said Medicaid had provided critical aid when his mother-in-law needed nursing home care.
“We couldn’t take care of her,” said Williamson. “He intervened. It made sure that she was taken care of.”
Williamson, whose own family obtains coverage through her husband’s employer, said that she would be very concerned about major reductions in Medicaid funding which could compromise the coverage of Americans in need.
For years, republican ideas on health care reflect a broad skepticism on the government and fears that regulations threaten patient access to doctors or vital medicines.
“The discussions 10 to 15 years ago were all around the choice,” said Christine Matthews, a republican survey that worked for many GOP politicians, including the former governor of Maryland Larry Hogan. “The free market, do not have the government limit or take control of your health care.”
Matthews and his colleague sounder Mike Perry recently summoned and paid several discussion groups with Trump voters, including Rouse and Williamson, which Kff Health News observed.
Skepticism about the government persists among basic republicans. And ideas such as the displacement of all Americans in a single government health plan, similar to “Medicare for all”, are always non-starters for many GOP voters.
But like tens of millions of Americans indebted Depending on the medical bills that they do not understand or cannot afford, many seem to reassess their inclination to turn to free markets rather than the government, said Bob Ward, whose firm, Fabrizio Ward, was questioned for Trump’s campaign in 2024.
“I think most people look at this and say the market is broken, and that is why they are ready to intervene for someone, anyone,” he said. “The game is stacked against people.”
In a Recent national surveyFabrizio Ward and Hart Research, who for decades questioned for Democratic candidates, noted that Trump voters were more likely to blame the health insurers, pharmaceutical companies and hospital systems than the government for high health care costs.
Sarah Bognaski, 31, administrative assistant in the north of New York State, is one of the many Trump voters who say they are taking advantage of the health care industry.
“I don’t think there is a reason why many costs should be as high as they are,” said Bognaski. “I think it’s just out of pure greed.”
High health care costs have had a direct impact on Bognaski, which was diagnosed four years ago with type 1 diabetes, a condition that makes it dependent on insulin. She said that she was ready to bring the government and caps what patients pay for pharmaceutical products. “I would like to see more regulations,” she said.
Charles Milliken, a retired car mechanic in Virginia-Western, who said he had supported Trump because the country “needs a businessman, not a politician,” said the new president is going even further.
“I think he will 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 more than $ 6,000 of medical debt.
Three -quarters of Trump voters support the government’s limits on what hospitals can charge, Ward’s survey revealed.
And about half of Trump’s voters in a Recent KFF survey said the new administration should prioritize the expansion of the number of drugs, the price of which is set by negotiation between the Federal Medicare program and pharmaceutical companies, a program launched within the framework of the Biden administration.
Perry, who summoned dozens of discussion groups with health care voters in recent years, said support for government prices ceilings was all the more remarkable because the regulation of medical prices is not at the top of the agenda for most politicians.
“It seems to be like a wave of earth,” he said. “They arrived at this decision by themselves, rather than all the decision-makers to drive them there, that something should be done.”
Other forms of government regulation, such as Limits to medical debts collectionsare even more popular.
About 8 out of 10 Republicans supported a ceiling of $ 2,300 on the quantity of patients who may be required to pay each year for a medical debt, according to a 2023 survey By the Perry survey company, Perryundem. And 9 out of 10 favored a ceiling on interest rates billed on medical debt.
“These are what I would consider as non-eruptors, from a political point of view,” said Ward.
But GOP’s political leaders in Washington have historically expressed little interest in government limits on what patients pay for medical care. And while Trump and his allies in Congress are starting to shape their health program, many Republican leaders have expressed more interest in reducing the government than to extend its protections.
“There is often a massive disconnection,” said Ward, “between what is happening in the Caucus on Capitol Hill and what is happening in family tables across America.”
Kff Health News is a national editorial room that produces in -depth journalism on health problems and is one of the main operating programs in Kff.