Americans are concerned with the rising cost of healthcare along with surging health insurance premiums.
A Gallup poll released last week found that healthcare is the top domestic issue facing Americans among 16 policy areas included in the survey, with 61% saying they worry a great deal about healthcare access and affordability.
Healthcare topping the list of domestic concerns represents a resurgence in the issue’s prominence, as the last time it was the foremost issue in voters’ minds was 2020 – a position it held dating back to 2015. It was roughly tied with the economy in 2025, but now leads by 10 points.
Those findings are similar to those of a recent Fox News poll, which found that 81% of voters are either “extremely” or “very” concerned about healthcare, a figure which trailed only inflation and high prices, while 86% of voters were concerned about inflation and high prices.
The poll found that healthcare was a concern for a majority of voters across political groups, with 89% of Democrats, 80% of Independents and 72% of Republicans saying they were either “extremely” or “very concerned” about healthcare.
Healthcare concerns were also widespread across age groups: 77% of respondents under age 45 and 83% of those over age 45 were extremely or very concerned about healthcare – views that were shared by 86% of those aged 65 and up.
American consumers have faced rising health insurance premiums in recent years, with prices jumping this year due to the end of an extra subsidy for consumers.
Health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is subsidized through a premium tax credit available to lower- and some middle-income households. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Congress added another subsidy on top of the baseline subsidy.
However, the Trump administration and Congress allowed the pandemic-era enhanced subsidy to expire at the end of last year, which has pushed premiums higher.
An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), a nonprofit group focused on national healthcare policy, estimated last year that the expiration of the enhanced premium tax credits would cause annual out-of-pocket premium payments to rise by over $1,000 this year – jumping 114% from $888 in 2025 to $1,904 in 2026.
Health insurance companies have also been raising premiums for non-Obamacare plans for years, which experts have attributed to higher healthcare costs.
Data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) shows that consumers have shifted into lower-cost health insurance plans in the 2026 open enrollment period compared with the prior year.
The CMS data shows that in 2025, 56% of enrollees were in silver tier plans while 30% were in bronze plans. By contrast, the data for 2026 shows 40% of enrollees in bronze plans and 43% in silver. The share of enrollees in gold tier plans also rose from 13% in 2025 to 17% this year.
