The 2026 election could reshape healthcare

New Yorkers march in support of universal healthcare this summer. | LightRocket via Getty Images Americans are furious about the state of our healthcare system.

A recent KFF poll found 60 percent of US adults worry about the cost of medical care — more than gasoline, food and groceries, or their rent or mortgage.

One in three Americans say they worry every day or almost every day about their ability to afford healthcare, per a new survey from the Pew Research Center .

There seems to be a growing appetite for reform, too: More than 65 percent of Americans say they support the government spending more tax dollars to lower healthcare costs.

Democrats are trying to weaponize those frustrations against the Republicans who currently hold Congress and the White House.

By a 2-to-1 margin, voters say they trust Democrats over Republicans on healthcare.

That could mean single-payer Medicare-for-all or a new public insurance option or maybe something else.

What all this energy leads to will depend on what happens in November.

The candidates themselves are framing the stakes in those existential terms.

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How is anyone supposed to make sense of it all? Vox’s senior correspondent Dylan Scott has been on the health beat for a long time, and every week, he’ll wade into sticky debates, answer fair questions, and contextualize what’s happening in American health care policy.

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“Medicare for all is where we need to go,” Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic candidate in the Michigan Senate race whose support for the policy has been widely covered, said during an August interview with CNN.

“And my hope is, both coming out of the 2026 midterms and then out of 2028, that we’re going to be on our way to a Senate majority to be able to get this done.” Real change will have to wait for the 2028 presidential election and a new occupant in the White House.