As concerns over health costs mount, Trump tries cash

With the midterm elections a month away and Republicans struggling to respond to voter frustration over healthcare costs, President Trump is handing out cash.

Last week, Trump pledged $90 to more than tens of millions of seniors on Medicare. That announcement came on top of other pledges to send money to Americans, including $500 ObamaCare “refund” checks that the administration began sending to some Affordable Care Act (ACA) enrollees last week.

The president also reiterated a promise of a $5,000 “Trump dividend” to every adult U.S. citizen, contingent on Republicans retaining control of Congress.

The moves are a political Hail Mary that come as Republicans worry that the high cost of healthcare is one of the party’s greatest liabilities.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt Republicans have never been particularly good at healthcare messaging and I certainly don’t think we are winning the day on it right now,” said Jason Cabel Roe, a Michigan-based Republican strategist working on Rep. Tom Barrett’s (R-Mich.) campaign.

However, Cabel Roe said he hasn’t seen healthcare show up in polls as much as he thought it would.

“I think that’s probably leading people to maybe back off dedicating a lot of their messaging to healthcare,” he said.

But polling over the past year has consistently shown that voters are worried about the cost of healthcare — and trust Democrats more to fix it.

A survey this week from KFF found that healthcare costs and gas prices are tied as Americans’ top economic worries. Voters overall trust Democrats to handle healthcare costs by a nearly two-to-one margin over Republicans.

A Gallup survey from March found more Americans were concerned about the “availability and affordability of healthcare” more than any........

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