Politics

Demographic That Voted Trump In Large Numbers Turns On His Healthcare Plan, Poll Shows

Photo by Scott Goodwill via upsplash

The majority of rural Americans do not approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of healthcare ahead of November’s midterms, per a KFF-AP poll out Wednesday.

The new survey shows that 54% of rural voters disapprove of the president’s approach to healthcare. The poll’s release comes after the vast majority of Americans living in rural areas backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

Of those surveyed, 44% say the Trump administration’s healthcare policies have negatively impacted Medicare, compared to 35% who said they had no impact on the program and 21% who said they had a positive impact.

Meanwhile, another 44% of rural Americans thought the administration’s health policies have negatively impacted Medicaid, while 31% said the policies have positively impacted the program and 24% said they have not had an impact on it, according to the poll.

“President Trump enacted the largest ever investment in rural health care when he signed the landmark Working Families Tax Cuts Act into law,” White House spokeswoman Allison Schuster told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Two-thirds of rural voters reported feeling “very” or “somewhat worried” about being able to afford gasoline, transportation costs or medical care for themselves or their families, the survey shows.

“We need more help affording healthcare for our family,” a 54-year-old Republican rural voter from Wisconsin said, KFF reported. “Our health insurance tripled this past year and we can barely afford to pay for it plus afford food!”

However, 30% of rural voters thought the administration’s policy on prescription drug costs has been positive, while 35% each said it has been negative or had no impact.

The Trump administration has been spearheading an effort to bring down prescription drug costs across the U.S. in recent months. The president announced on Sept. 18 that all 50 U.S. states’ Medicaid programs will now “benefit from lower prescription drug prices under his agreements with pharmaceutical manufacturers to match the lowest prices paid by other developed nations.”

Additionally, the administration unveiled a $167 million investment on Sept. 17 aiming to build new rural healthcare sites and revamp health technology in South Carolina through the federal Rural Health Transformation Program.

“The Rural Health Transformation Program it created is currently investing billions of dollars to transform rural health access and actually meet the unique needs of these communities instead of simply pouring money into the failed approaches of the past,” Schuster told the DCNF. “President Trump continues to prioritize the health of rural Americans by taking innovative, decisive action to lower costs and improve quality of care for millions of hardworking Americans.”

The latest KFF-AP survey was conducted online and by telephone August 12-24 among a nationally representative sample of 2,241 U.S. adults registered to vote in rural areas of the nation. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.