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Why healthcare has become such a big problem for Republicans

The GOP hoped to keep Medicaid cuts out of the midterms. It’s not working.

Less than a week out from the 2026 midterms, Republicans across the country are feeling the heat from their party’s vote last year to shrink Medicaid by roughly $1 trillion over the next decade. The cuts, driven largely by new work requirements and eligibility checks, are expected to leave more than 7 million Americans without insurance by 2034. They’ll also hit hospitals, clinics, and nursing homes that everyone uses, whether or not they’re on Medicaid.

These cuts weren’t supposed to be noticeable to voters just yet. Republicans designed them to take effect in 2027, after the midterms.

But some of the damage is already showing up. Paired with a reduction in tax credits to help buy insurance through the Affordable Care Act, and rising employee premiums, the cuts are colliding with a broader voter revolt against the high cost of living — and have turned healthcare into a top midterm issue.

A slew of recent polling shows healthcare costs sitting at the top of voters’ economic worries as the campaign season winds down. A KFF poll from earlier this month found healthcare outranked food, housing, and utilities as a top concern, with nearly half of voters saying it was “extremely important” for candidates to be talking about. And in late September, an Associated Press and KFF survey of rural voters found that twice as many said the Trump administration’s healthcare policies had hurt the health of people in their community as said they’d helped.

Healthcare costs top the list of voters’ economic concerns

The GOP’s new $50 billion rural fund doesn’t offset $137 billion in rural Medicaid cuts, and the savings come mostly from people losing coverage.

Work requirements hit nationwide in 2027, so the first wave of coverage losses lands as the 2028 campaign begins.

Republicans have tried to rebrand the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as the “Working Families Tax Cuts,” but Politico found voters largely unmoved by the new name, and Fox News recently gave Democrats a 22-point lead on who voters trust to handle healthcare.

Democrats, for their part, have put healthcare costs at the center of their closing argument. It’s the issue they’ve spent more on than any other, according to the Cook Political Report’s Battleground Issue Tracker, with more than $215 million across the most competitive House and Senate races this year. Democrats trying to........

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