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The MIDTERMS

Democrats Hold a Nearly 2-to-1 Advantage Over Republicans on Handling the Cost of Health Care

Poll: Cost of Health Care and Gas Top Voters’ Midterm Concerns; Democrats Hold Significant Advantage on Health Care Costs and Cost of Living 

With the 2026 midterms about a month away, health care costs remain tied with gas as voters’ top midterm concerns and the Democrats hold a clear edge over the Republicans Party on who voters trust to handle many top electoral issues, including the cost of health care and the cost of living. Two-thirds of U.S. adults now favor Medicare-for-all, a new high in KFF Polling, but support shifts when competing claims from critics and proponents are heard.

New and noteworthy

Americans’ Challenges with Health Care Costs

This data note reviews our recent polling data that finds that many Americans struggle to afford many aspects of health care, including disproportionate shares of uninsured adults, Black and Hispanic adults and those with lower incomes.

Health System Tracker

Is This A Healthcare Economy?

Health care employment has grown faster than other sectors of the economy, with jobs in physician offices, hospitals, outpatient care centers, home health, and other settings increasing over the past year even as the rest of the job market plateaued. 

Cumulative percent change in health sector and non-health sector employment, January 1990 - August 2026

What Are the Recent Trends in Health Sector Employment

Health care employment continues to grow even as hiring across other sectors has plateaued. The health sector added nearly 379,000 jobs over the past year, a 2% increase, compared with just 0.2% growth in other non-farm employment, with outpatient care among the fastest-growing health care settings.

How TrumpRx Brand-Name Drug Prices Compare

TrumpRx prices for brand-name drugs are about as likely to be higher as lower compared to average prices in other wealthy countries, according to an analysis that compares 32 brand-name drugs.

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  • A Look at People Who Have Persistently High Spending on Health Care

    Issue Brief

    This analysis looks at the amounts and types of health spending for people with employer-based health insurance who have continuing high health care spending. It finds that, among people with three consecutive years of coverage from a large employer, just 1.3 percent of enrollees accounted for almost 20 percent of overall spending in 2017. This group – people in the top five percent of spending in each of the three years from 2015 to 2017…

  • Analysis: ‘Cadillac Tax’ on High-Cost Health Plans Could Affect 1 in 5 Employers in 2022

    News Release

    A new KFF analysis estimates that the Affordable Care Act’s tax on high-cost health plans would affect one in five (21%) employers offering health benefits when it takes effect in 2022 unless employers change their health plans. An even larger share (31%) could be affected when workers’ voluntary contributions to Flexible Spending Accounts are taken into account. The analysis comes as some in Congress are proposing to repeal the ACA’s tax on high-cost health plans,…

  • How Many Employers Could Be Affected by the High-Cost Plan Tax

    Issue Brief

    The high cost plan tax (HCPT) sometimes referred to as the Cadillac tax, is an excise tax on the cost of employer health benefit exceeding certain threshold. The HCPT provides a powerful incentive to control health plans costs over time, whether through efficiency gains or shifts in costs to workers. While many employers do not expect that the tax will take effect in 2022, others are already amending their health programs in anticipation. We estimate…

  • Uwe Reinhardt - Event - Page

    Uwe Reinhardt’s New Book Priced Out: His Health Policy Ideas in Today’s Debates

    Event Date:
    Event

    Dr. Uwe Reinhardt is a giant in the health policy field who advised policymakers and influenced debates about the nation’s health system before his passing in 2017. His recently released last book, Priced Out: The Ethics and Economics of Health Care, completed by his wife and longtime collaborator Tsung-Mei (May) Cheng gives us the gift of further insights into the U.S. health system and many issues that the country is debating right now, ranging from health price…

  • The Only Health Care Prices That Matter to Consumers

    From Drew Altman

    In this column, Drew Altman zeroes in on a key test for when the implementing rules are written for the new executive order on hospital price transparency: consumers will need to know what amount they must pay out of pocket to really help them shop on price.

  • How Many Medicare Part D Enrollees Had High Out-of-Pocket Drug Costs in 2017?

    Issue Brief

    The Medicare Part D prescription drug benefit has helped improve the affordability of medications for people with Medicare. Yet Part D enrollees can face relatively high out-of-pocket costs because the Part D benefit does not have a hard cap on out-of-pocket spending. This analysis presents the latest data on out-of-pocket drug spending among Medicare Part D enrollees without low-income subsidies who have costs above the catastrophic coverage threshold.

  • About 1 in 6 Emergency Visits and Hospital Stays Had At Least One Out-of-Network Charge in 2017

    News Release

    In roughly 1 of every 6 emergency room visits and inpatient hospital stays in 2017, patients came home with at least one out-of-network medical bill, a new KFF analysis finds. More specifically, 18 percent of all emergency visits and 16 percent of in-network hospital stays had at least one out-of-network charge, leaving patients at risk for surprise medical bills, according to the analysis of claims data from large employer plans. The analysis also finds the…

  • KFF Health Tracking Poll – June 2019: Health Care in the Democratic Primary and Medicare-for-all

    Feature

    In anticipation of upcoming Democratic presidential debates, this poll finds that Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say that health care is a top issue they want to hear candidates talk about. When asked to say in their own words what health care issue they specifically want to hear about, affordability emerges as one of the top issues. The poll also probes the public about different possible implications of implementing a Medicare-for-all plan and finds that most…

  • Poll: Most Americans Don’t Realize How Dramatically the Medicare-for-all Proposals Would Revamp the Nation’s Health Care System

    News Release

    As Congress and the Democratic presidential candidates continue to discuss Medicare-for-all and other proposals to expand public health coverage, most Americans know little about how the leading Medicare-for-all proposals would reshape the way all Americans get and pay for health care. This month’s KFF Health Tracking Poll probes the public’s awareness of key elements of proposals to create a national health plan, including the leading Medicare-for-all bills introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila…