{"id":15578,"date":"2026-09-18T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=15578"},"modified":"2026-09-18T09:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T09:00:00","slug":"sticker-shock-at-the-doctors-office-could-motivate-midterm-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/?p=15578","title":{"rendered":"Sticker Shock at the Doctor\u2019s Office Could Motivate Midterm Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Healthcare prices are likely to <a href=\"https:\/\/wamu.org\/story\/26\/09\/10\/anger-over-health-costs-clouds-midterms\/\">keep increasing<\/a> next year. As midterm elections approach, candidates are laying out their plans to tackle these growing expenses.<\/p>\n<p>KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner joined WAMU\u2019s <em>Health Hub<\/em> on Sept. 16 to explain how healthcare could play a critical role in the midterm elections. She said similar cost increases in the early 2000s led to the debate that became the Affordable Care Act.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re seeing people have to pay more in their \u2014 not just premiums \u2014 but their deductibles, how much they pay before their insurance kicks in, and how much they pay when they go to the doctor,\u201d said Rovner, host of the <em>What the Health? From KFF Health News<\/em> podcast.<\/p>\n<p>In recent years, it\u2019s not uncommon for healthcare providers to ask for payment upfront.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cNow you get there, and they say, \u2018Can we have your credit card?\u2019 before you even get to go in and get your care,\u201d Rovner said.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/about-us\">KFF Health News<\/a> is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF\u2014an independent source of health policy research, polling, and journalism. Learn more about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/about-us\">KFF<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>This <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/elections\/healthcare-affordability-shapes-competitive-races-midterm-elections\/\" rel=\"noopener\">article<\/a> first appeared on <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/kffhealthnews.org\/\" rel=\"noopener\">KFF Health News<\/a> and is republished here under a <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\" rel=\"noopener\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Healthcare prices are likely to keep increasing next year. As midterm elections approach, candidates are laying out their plans to tackle these growing expenses. KFF Health News chief Washington correspondent Julie Rovner joined WAMU\u2019s Health Hub on Sept. 16 to explain how healthcare could play a critical role in the midterm elections. She said similar&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":15579,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15578","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15578"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15578"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15578\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/15579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15578"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15578"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medical-article.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15578"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}