With midterm elections now less than four months away, cost tops the list of voters’ health care concerns, a new KFF Health Tracking Poll found.
Half of all voters, including 6 in 10 Democrats and 55% of independents, said this issue is extremely important for candidates to talk about. At the same time, more than half of Republican voters said it is extremely important for candidates to discuss the issue of fraud in government health programs.
Although most voters said there is at least “some” fraud in government health programs, larger shares said there also is fraud in other areas of government, including the federal tax system (52%), federal military and defense contracts (46%) and foreign aid programs (46%). Smaller shares of voters said there is a lot of fraud in Medicaid (40%), Medicare (36%) and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Marketplaces (29%).
Voters are much more likely to attribute fraud in Medicaid and Medicare primarily to health care providers rather than individual patients, while about 3 in 10 are not sure who is primarily responsible. The Trump administration has launched sweeping fraud, waste and abuse initiatives across all 50 states.
More than 7 in 10 voters said ensuring that Medicaid beneficiaries can access the care they need should be a higher priority than reducing fraud, even if it means some fraud may occur. Republican voters are closely divided on this trade-off, with about half saying access to care should be a priority and half saying fraud preventions should be a priority, even if it harms access for some eligible people. Three-fourths of voters, including majorities of Democrats (89%), independents (81%) and Republicans (61%), said delayed federal payments to state Medicaid programs likely would cause some eligible low-income people to lose access to health care services.
Overall, nearly two-thirds of voters, including large majorities of Democrats (89%) and independents (70%) voters, said the Medicaid deferral approach is motivated by politics, while most Republicans (69%) said it is motivated mostly by protecting Medicaid. Meanwhile, voters are evenly split over whether delaying federal funding to states is likely to significantly reduce fraud. Fewer than half of voters across partisan lines said it is likely to lower health costs for people like them, including 46% of Republican voters and smaller shares of independent (25%) and Democratic (26%) voters.