Like many Americans who voted for Donald Trump, Jason Rouse hopes the president’s return will mean lower prices for gas, groceries, and other essentials.
But Rouse is looking to the federal government for relief from one particular pain point: high health care costs. “The prices are just ridiculous,” said Rouse, 53, a retired Michigan firefighter and paramedic who has voted for Trump three times. “I’d like to see a lower cap on what I have to pay out-of-pocket.”
Government regulation of health care prices used to be heresy for most Republicans. GOP leaders fiercely opposed the 2010 Affordable Care Act, which included government limits on patients’ costs. More recently, the party fought legislation signed by former President Joe Biden to cap prescription drug prices.
But as Trump begins his second term, many of the voters who sent him back to the White House welcome more robust government action to rein in a health care system many Americans perceive as out of control, polls show.
“That idea that government should just keep its hands off, even when things are tough for people, has kind of lost its sheen,” said Andrew Seligsohn, president of Public Agenda, a nonprofit that has studied public attitudes about government and health care.
“We’re wandering around the country with a set of old, o …