Julia Dvorak sees health care costs hitting families in the real time of emergency-room visits and retirement budgets, and she expects pressure to intensify in the year ahead. Dvorak, who lives outside Cedar Rapids, Iowa, said her 83-year-old mother’s trips for seizures are draining her savings, and she worries her mother will soon have to rely on Medicaid. Dvorak, 56, also described her own chronic knee condition and said she expects her costs to rise in 2026 as health care emerged as an unusually prominent priority for government action in an AP-NORC poll.
The December survey, conducted Dec. 4-8 with a probability sample of 1,146 adults drawn from NORC’s AmeriSpeak Panel, asked respondents to name up to five issues they want the government to work on in the coming year. In answers to an open-ended question, about 4 in 10 U.S. adults named health care or health issues, up from about one-third last year, according to AP-NORC.
AP-NORC also found that Americans are less confident that the government can make progress on the country’s major problems in 2026. Roughly 66% of U.S. adults said they were “slightly” or “not at all confident,” a result the poll described as down from 58% last year.
The sharp increase in health care concerns came amid policy changes AP-NORC linked to the Trump administration’s approach to Medicaid and Affordable Care Act subsidies. The AP-NORC poll said the increase followed reductions in Medicaid spending and a decision to end coronavirus pandemic-era subsidies for the Affordable Care Act, changes it said could translate into steep cost rises for millions early next year. The poll noted that those developments could put health care back at the center of the midterm elections, with voters determining control of Congress in 2026.
Joshua Campbell, a 38-year-old small business owner from Hot Springs Village, Arkansas, said he had voted for Trump last year and mostly approved of his handling of immigration, but he described health insurance costs as becoming a major priority for 2026. Campbell said that when he and his wife looked for coverage for their young daughter, the costs surprised him and led him to conclude there “got to be something better” than what they had.
The poll said the concern about health care costs was particularly high among adults ages 45 to 59—people who may face higher health costs than younger adults but are not yet eligible for Medicare. It said the pattern resembled what Trump confronted at the end of his first year in office during his first term, when health care reform was among the most frequently mentioned priorities, while the poll also said cost-of-living concerns were now more prevalent than they were in 2017.
Cost pressures also stayed near the top of many Americans’ minds beyond health care. Tommy Carosone, a 44-year-old jet aircraft mechanic from St. Peter’s, Missouri, said grocery bills—especially for meat items like ground beef and bacon—have risen for his family of four and that inflation is not likely to ease soon. Carosone said he is the household’s sole wage earner and told AP that his view of prices staying higher is tied to the trade agenda as well.
When asked for priorities, about 2 in 10 U.S. adults said they want the federal government to focus on housing costs next year, the poll reported. It also said that issue has been rising, with younger adults more likely than older adults to mention it—about one-quarter of adults under 30 compared with about 1 in 10 of those 60 or older.
On immigration, AP-NORC reported that it remained a pressing issue, though the poll described shifting partisan views. It said immigration was the top government priority for Americans last year, with about half of U.S. adults citing it, and that about 44% said they want the government to prioritize immigration in 2026 as well. The poll said Democrats were increasingly concerned about the issue, while Republicans and independents were less so, and it reported that about 4 in 10 Democrats named immigration as a concern this year compared with 32% last year, while about 6 in 10 Republicans listed it compared with about 7 in 10 last year.
Roxanna Holper, 64, of Minnesota, said she is worried about the Trump administration’s approach to immigration even though she said she has voted for Republicans and Democrats. Holper described herself as not ideological and said lately she has been voting Democratic, pointing to stories about deportations and describing the actions she has seen as appalling. She said Trump campaigned on removing “the worst of the worst,” but she said she does not believe that is what has been happening, as she described it.
AP said Beaumont reported from Des Moines, Iowa, Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J., and Parwani reported from Columbus, Ohio. The poll’s margin of sampling error for adults overall was plus or minus 4 percentage points.