Democrats’ decisive sweep of the U.S. House and Senate in Tuesday’s elections will reshape the direction of federal health policy — setting the stage for oversight investigations, a legislative push to reverse cuts to the Affordable Care Act and Medicaid, and a focus on lowering costs such as insurance premiums and drug prices.
The conclusive string of victories sets up Democrats to argue that voters — who said in preelection surveys that healthcare affordability was a top concern — have given them a clear mandate to overturn historic cuts President Donald Trump and Republicans made to public healthcare programs.
The breadth of success, including wins by Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed of Michigan and other progressives, is likely to embolden some Democrats to forge ahead with ambitious policy proposals such as expanding Medicare, the federal insurance program for people age 65 and older, to cover all Americans. Their plan is to be positioned as the party that prioritizes lowering healthcare costs for the 2028 presidential election.
Party leaders, though, will need buy-in from Trump to advance any healthcare agenda. While he has veto power, he may be interested in brokering legislative deals as he seeks to cement his legacy and deflect fallout from investigations into his administration’s handling of the war against Iran, mass deportations, contracting scandals, and other controversies.
Democrats were projected to win at least 237 of 435 seats in the House and at least 54 Senate seats as of Wednesday afternoon, according to The Associated Press. Several key races remained unresolved, including Senate contests in Alaska and Mississippi.
As election results continued coming out into early-morning Wednesday, Trump said in a phone interview with Politico that he had spoken with Democratic Party leaders and that voters had sent a message he must work with them “to make sure things go well for our country.”
“I don’t want to just be sitting there for two years vetoing everything,” Trump said. “They want to see things happen, too.”
But how Trump’s new conciliatory position plays out in undoing GOP-led changes, such as new work requirements for many adults enrolled in Medicaid, the state-federal program for low-income and disabled people, remains to be seen. Republicans touted their overhaul of Medicaid and other changes to health programs wrought by their One Big Beautiful Bill Act as signature achievements in midterm campaigns.
Democrats, however, will have to carefully balance their policy moves against their desire to investigate a host of concerns surrounding the nation’s top health official, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has dismantled U.S. vaccine recommendations, gutted the staff of federal health agencies, and cut public health funding.
“Democrats will put forward an expansive healthcare agenda, including reversal of cuts to Medicaid and the ACA, but achieving all of that will be impossible with President Trump still in the White House,” said Larry Levitt, an executive vice president at KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News.
New Year, New Congress, New Majority
An early order of business for Democrats in 2027 will likely be a legislative push to restore enhanced subsidies that reduced the price millions of people paid for Obamacare health plans. The larger subsidies were created during the covid-19 pandemic, as part of economic relief programs, but ended last year after Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress declined to extend them.
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the current Democratic House leader widely expected to become speaker of the House, told CNN on Wednesday that the party should bring back the subsidies to help struggling families.
“My guess is it would be rolled into a broader budget negotiation or package that may or may not involve other healthcare priorities, like restoring Medicaid cuts or other things that are priorities for Democrats,” said Sabrina Corlette, a co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.
If they act decisively, said Leslie Dach, who chairs the Democratic-aligned advocacy group Protect Our Care, Democrats could both renew the ACA’s expired subsidies and extend the enrollment period for 2027 coverage, which ends in most states on Jan. 15, shortly after the new Congress is scheduled to be sworn in.
They would need to act within days of assuming control, Dach said.
“Congress will be sworn in during open enrollment, at a time when people will be having to make difficult and horrific choices about their healthcare, given the further increases in premiums due to the Republicans,” he said.
Premiums for Affordable Care Act benchmark plans are set to increase by an average of 13% for 2027, according to KFF researchers.
With Congress likely to pass another short-term government funding bill in December, the stage will be set for incoming lawmakers to also fight a battle over Medicaid spending cuts in the spring, said Rodney Whitlock, a healthcare consultant who previously worked for Republicans in Congress.
Democrats — many of whom put healthcare affordability at the center of their election campaigns — are now well positioned to place that issue at the center of negotiations with Trump over federal spending.
“If you’ve got the opportunity for a battle in March over fiscal year funding — and Democrats picking and choosing what they want to make this first battle about with a unified, controlled Congress with the president — damn, doesn’t it scream healthcare?” Whitlock said. “Doesn’t it scream repeal or delay all the Medicaid cuts?”
Allison Orris, a partner at Manatt, advised clients before Election Day not to count on anything changing — even with Democrats in control.
“The White House ultimately will have to sign any legislation, and HR 1 was a signature accomplishment. It will cost money to undo or even just delay changes that were enacted in 2025,” she said, referring to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
What Else Could Happen?
Trump is likely to continue leaning heavily into executive actions to shape health policy from the White House. Democrats, meanwhile, will use their control of Congress to exercise oversight of the Trump administration and the Department of Health and Human Services.
Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, has promised the party will “hold the crooks accountable” by pursuing aggressive oversight of the Trump administration. Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform put out a report in June previewing investigations they may launch.
Specifically, Democrats want to zero in on clandestine drug-pricing deals Trump has made with pharmaceutical companies in return for relief from certain tariffs. No contracts or paperwork on the agreements have been made public. They also claim he benefited from stock prices that rose when companies received exemptions from price negotiation in Medicare under the 2025 GOP tax and spending law.
By taking control of congressional committees, Democrats will gain subpoena power, an important investigatory tool. But it’s unclear whether they can successfully pry documents from the government or companies because the Department of Justice, under Trump, is largely in charge of enforcing subpoenas. Nevertheless, subpoenas are likely to be issued regarding investigations into tariffs Trump has imposed and threatened to impose on prescription drugs.
Democratic congressional leaders will also be able to file lawsuits against the Trump administration to challenge the White House’s actions.
Democrats also have telegraphed plans to probe scientific decision-making around such controversial issues as allowing more sales of flavored vapes and White House promotion of the herbicide glyphosate — and any connections these actions have had to political contributions from companies.
Other industry oversight by Democrats would likely focus on preauthorization denials by insurance companies; scrutiny of Medicare Advantage, an alternative program to traditional Medicare run by commercial insurers; and the use of artificial intelligence in medical decision-making.
Also looming is a wider discussion of universal health coverage, including partial steps such as expanding traditional Medicare benefits to include dental and hearing care and lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 60 or younger.
Expanding the program to cover all Americans faces formidable challenges, even if Trump were open to it. Much of the nation’s healthcare industry — including doctors, hospitals, and insurers — would surely fight any legislative effort, and Democrats have never seriously grappled with the enormous implications of such a proposal for the federal budget, taxes, medical care, and broader society.
Other possible initiatives include implementing a federal solution to address the 10 states that have opted not to fully expand Medicaid to cover lower-income adults, as well as allowing children to remain on their parents’ health insurance policies beyond age 26.
Because the new Congress is not set to be sworn in until January, a lame-duck session through year’s end, for which Republicans retain the majority, will focus on funding the federal government and addressing some health programs set to expire.
One major move Congress is expected to make soon: a confirmation vote for Heidi Overton to lead the Food and Drug Administration, which has been without a top leader since May. Her confirmation is not guaranteed, however, with Democrats uniformly in opposition.
A handful of Republicans have questioned whether she will sufficiently restrict access to medication abortion, while some more moderate Republicans have expressed concerns, too — including Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who questioned whether Overton supports the administration’s changes to vaccine recommendations.
Cassidy lost his seat after Trump endorsed a Republican primary challenger, Rep. Julia Letlow, who narrowly won election to the Senate on Tuesday.
Other issues enjoy bipartisan support, such as preventing cuts to Medicare payments to doctors, scheduled to begin Jan. 1, and making fixes to the No Surprises Act, a federal law that took effect in 2022 to protect consumers with private insurance from unexpected, out-of-network charges. But movement would be a long shot.
“Everyone gets hyped up for lame ducks, and they’re always a disappointment,” said Doug Holtz-Eakin, an economist and the president of the conservative-leaning American Action Forum.
But come January, Washington will need to find a way to work together to make healthcare more affordable — or risk ire from voters who have consistently ranked it as one of their top issues in recent elections, noted Matt Hogan, a partner at Impact Research, a Democratic polling firm.
When put together, healthcare and prescription drug prices are the top cost concern for voters older than 50, he noted.
Reining in prescription drug prices could be an area with bipartisan support — including from Trump, who claimed ahead of the midterms that lowering some drug prices was one of his administration’s greatest achievements. Both parties have proposed limits on pharmacy benefit managers, which negotiate drug prices on behalf of insurers and employers; patent restrictions for certain drugs; and the benchmarking of U.S. drug prices against the prices other countries pay.
“This is the third-straight election that’s really been focused on affordability,” Hogan said. “If members of Congress haven’t got the message yet, I expect them to now.”
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF—an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about KFF.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
