More and more Americans can’t find affordable health care. And they’re making sure Washington knows they aren’t happy about it.
A March 2026 Gallup poll found that Americans say the availability and affordability of health care is their top policy concern. Eighty-four percent of the country labeled this key issue as one they personally worry about at least “a fair amount,” with a whopping 61% personally worrying over this problem “a great deal.”
It’s easy to see why people are worried. High costs and difficulty accessing care have made Americans less healthy. A September 2024 Commonwealth Fund report found that the United States ranked dead last on multiple key health care measures compared to other developed countries.
And people’s pocketbooks are suffering, too. One third of Americans have had to cut back on daily expenses just to cover their health care costs. This includes an estimated 28 million people skipping a meal to pay for care or medicine. All the while, the United States invests the most out of any country in health care — throwing $5.3 trillion a year at the problem.
Unfortunately, these findings aren’t surprising. For decades, the American health system has been focused on delivering more—rather than better—care. An overemphasis on services instead of outcomes has led to widespread misvaluing in health care.
Nowhere is that clearer than in primary care, which has faced chronic underinvestment. Despite decades of evidence proving that whole-person primary care generates savings and improves people’s health, primary care remains dangerously underfunded, accounting for less than five cents of every health care dollar.
That underinvestment has contributed to a shortage of primary care clinicians—directly causing many of the access issues Americans are frustrated by today.
It’s beyond time for policymakers and industry leaders to act to address these underlying issues and the Primary Care Collaborative and our members have developed concrete solutions they can begin implementing today, including:
- shifting away from a fee-for-service (FFS) payment model toward a hybrid model (a mix of population based and fee-for-service payment)
- plainly investing more of America’s health care dollars into primary care
- implementing strategies to simplify value-based primary care by reducing administrative burdens
By implementing these pragmatic solutions to shift our health care payment system to reward health and wellness, policymakers and industry leaders can show they’re taking the American publics’ concerns about affordability to heart. Keeping Americans healthy is good for their and the nation’s pocketbooks.