Healthcare affordability is emerging as one of the defining anxieties heading into the 2026 midterms, as rising premiums, ballooning deductibles and even upfront payment demands reshape how voters think about their coverage.
For a wave of Democratic physicians and nurses running for Congress this fall, that anxiety also looks like an opening — a chance to turn their clinical credibility into congressional seats long held by Republicans, ABC News reported Sept. 18.
In Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, emergency room nurse Mitchell Berman is challenging Rep. Bryan Steil, R-Wis., with a campaign built around the gap between what he can treat in the emergency department and what follows a patient home.
“I can help mend their broken arm or give them medication to take away their pain, but what I struggle with is knowing full well that I can’t help them with the trauma that sets in two weeks later when they get their bill in the mail,” Mr. Berman said in an interview with ABC News.
Mr. Berman has also made Medicaid personal to his campaign, pointing to his mother’s own coverage.
“Medicaid afforded my mom an additional eight years of life. It gave her the opportunity to dance with me at my wedding. It gave her the ability to hold my first daughter and her first grandchild,” he said.
A similar case is playing out in South Carolina, where pediatrician Annie Andrews, MD, is running as a Democrat for the Senate seat formerly held by the late Sen. Lindsey Graham. Dr. Andrews has centered her campaign on Medicaid’s outsized role in a state where the program covers a large share of children’s care.
“I talk a lot about how it’s the largest insurer of children here in South Carolina,” Dr. Andrews said. “If this money is taken out of the system, it will really be devastating to a healthcare system that is already quite broken.”
In California’s 6th Congressional District, pediatrician and former state legislator Richard Pan, MD, is challenging independent Rep. Kevin Kiley, who caucuses with Republicans. Dr. Pan has framed his campaign less around billing and more around prevention, arguing that public health investment keeps patients out of the exam room in the first place and keeps illness from spreading through households and workplaces.
The three campaigns are part of a broader recruitment push by 314 Action, a group that backs scientists, physicians and other STEM professionals seeking office. Erik Polyak, executive director of 314 Action, said the political environment has convinced more clinicians to run than at any point in recent memory.
“We think 2026 is going to be the year of the doctor,” Mr. Polyak said.
There are currently 20 physicians serving in Congress — six Democrats and 14 Republicans — and the GOP Doctors Caucus counts 14 members in the U.S. House, according to ABC News. Democrats are betting that balance shifts in their favor this cycle, largely by pointing to Republican support for the 2025 reconciliation bill known as HR 1, which included roughly $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts over the next decade.
That fight over Medicaid is unfolding against a broader backdrop of healthcare affordability anxiety that cuts across party lines. Julie Rovner, chief Washington correspondent for KFF Health News and host of its “What the Health?” podcast, said voters are absorbing cost increases at nearly every point of contact with the healthcare system.
“We’re seeing people have to pay more in their — not just premiums — but their deductibles, how much they pay before their insurance kicks in, and how much they pay when they go to the doctor,” Ms. Rovner said.
Ms. Rovner pointed to a newer and more visible frustration: providers asking for payment before care is delivered.
“Now you get there, and they say, ‘Can we have your credit card?’ before you even get to go in and get your care,” she said.
Ms. Rovner noted that a similar surge in healthcare costs in the early 2000s helped set the stage for the debate that eventually produced the Affordable Care Act. Whether today’s cost anxiety produces a similar turning point, or simply reshuffles a handful of House and Senate seats, may not be clear until the votes are counted in November. For candidates like Mr. Berman, Dr. Andrews and Dr. Pan, the bet is that their patients’ frustration with the system they used to work inside is now strong enough to send them to Washington instead.
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