Healthcare powers Democrats’ midterm rout: 4 takeaways

Voters sent a strong rebuke of the GOP health agenda on Tuesday night as Democrats took control of both chambers of Congress, rejecting Republicans who pushed sweeping healthcare cuts.

Here are four takeaways from the results:

Health affordability was a winning message

Democratic candidates made healthcare affordability a key part of their messages. They campaigned on restoring the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies and to delay or roll back the Medicaid cuts passed under the One Big Beautiful Bill.

Polling over the past year consistently showed that voters are worried about the cost of healthcare — and trusted Democrats more to fix it. Democrats leaned into that message, and the results were borne out on Tuesday.

Ohio pediatrician and Gov.-elect Amy Acton (D), who led the state’s COVID-19 response, kept healthcare costs top-of-mind throughout her campaign.

She prioritized issues like forgiving medical debt, ending surprise billing and keeping Medicaid accessible.

“There is no more breathing room. From the grocery and gas bills, to the utilities, to childcare, to healthcare costs; Ohioans are doing everything right, but they just can’t get ahead,” Acton said in her victory speech.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist and former public health director of Detroit and Wayne County, made single-payer healthcare and a guarantee of care a central part of his campaign for Senate in Michigan.

“America’s greatness is the fight to guarantee all of us the healthcare we need if we get sick,” El-Sayed told his supporters during a victory speech late Tuesday night.

Democratic doctors and scientists rebuff RFK Jr.

Voters across the country chose physicians who ran diametrically against the Make America Health Again (MAHA) agenda and the Trump administration’s health policies.

Dr. Annie Andrews (D) in South Carolina made it known early on that her decision to run for office was spurred by Kennedy being nominated as health secretary. Andrews has pledged to “lead the charge” to impeach and remove Kennedy.

“I’ve watched as insurance companies stood between sick children and the care that they need. I’ve seen how decisions made in Washington affect the lives of the children and families I’ve cared for, and that’s why I decided to run, because I believe we have a responsibility to leave our children something better than what we inherited,” Andrews said in her victory speech.

With El-Sayed and Andrews winning their respective races, the Senate will have Democratic doctors for the first time since former Sen. Ernest H. Gruening (D-Alaska) left office in 1969. And Andrews will be the first Democratic practicing physician in the upper chamber in nearly 90 years.

In the House, California pediatrician Richard Pan managed to flip the state’s 6th Congressional District and unseat incumbent Rep. Kevin Kiley (I). Pan ran on a campaign of holding the administration accountable for its healthcare policies.

The blue medical wave on Tuesday night was also a victory for 314 Action, the political action committee dedicated to getting Democrats in STEM elected.

“314 Action candidates flipped the House because this was a healthcare election, and we elect outsiders who voters trust,” 314 Action President Shaughnessy Naughton said in a statement. “Millions of Americans lost healthcare because of Trump, RFK Jr. and Republicans in Congress, and on Tuesday—voters answered by electing a new wave of doctors and scientists to Washington. This proves that STEM candidates are better positioned than any other candidate to win battleground races.”

Medicare for All gets a boost

Democrats will have major decisions ahead on healthcare, and party leaders will need to navigate the divisions between progressive factions itching to pursue Medicare for All and moderates that want more incremental change.

Buoyed by the victory of candidates like El-Sayed in Michigan, progressives in the House and Senate are expected to make a significant push for single-payer health care.

“WHO WANTS MEDICARE FOR ALL?” Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who won reelection, wrote on the social platform X late Tuesday.

During his victory speech Tuesday night, El-Sayed thanked his supporters in a call-and-response chant for backing “money out of politics, money in your pocket, and Medicare for All!”

While major change is unlikely in the next two years with President Trump still in office, advocates are looking to set the agenda with an eye towards the 2028 presidential election.

Neither Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.) nor Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.) — the likely Speaker and Senate Majority Leader, respectively — have endorsed the most recent version of Medicare for All.

But letting a bill come to the floor during the Trump presidency would catapult Medicare for All directly into the 2028 conversation and show Democrats no longer fear the attacks about taking away people’s private insurance.

As many adults and families struggle to afford health costs, the popularity of Medicare for All is growing. A KFF poll in September showed two-thirds of Americans favored a “single government plan.”

A national debate would likely include more details about costs and tradeoffs that aren’t being captured in surface-level campaign slogans.

The same poll showed support plummeted when people heard the arguments that Medicare for All could lead to delays in medical tests and treatments and tax increases or threaten the current Medicare program.

But support grew when respondents heard that a national insurance plan could make health insurance “a right” or eliminate premiums and cost-sharing.

MAHA GOP candidates lose

The alliance between supporters of Kennedy’s MAHA movement and Trump-aligned Republicans was already fraying in the run-up to Tuesday.

The results show that alliance may be on life support.

Conservatives and the Trump administration “broke almost every promise on MAHA, no new wars, Epstein, affordability…There is a clear direction of where conservatives need to head in 2028 if we want a fighting chance. Otherwise AOC will be president,” Turning Point USA commentator Alex Voetberg wrote on X late Tuesday.

Major MAHA-aligned Republican politicians in Iowa, Texas and Kansas lost, dealing a major blow to Kennedy and his allies in the movement.

The most significant defeat for Kennedy and the vaccine-skeptic wing of the MAHA movement came when Iowa GOP gubernatorial candidate Zach Lahn lost in a landslide to Democratic state auditor Rob Sand.

Kennedy and MAHA groups invested significant time and money promoting Lahn, who vowed to ban COVID-19 vaccines, end school vaccine mandates, clean Iowa’s water and regulate chemicals if he was elected.

During a MAHA rally late last week, Kennedy called Lahn’s race “the most important election going on in this country.”

Yet Sand also leaned into the environmental wing of MAHA and made tackling the environmental causes of cancer — and blaming “Big Ag” — a key part of his platform.

Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall (R) lost his race in a major upset to Democrat Adam Hamilton. Marshall, chairman of the Senate’s MAHA caucus and a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, has been key to shepherding Trump’s health nominees through Congress and giving MAHA priorities a legislative voice.

While some MAHA grassroots activists think the movement’s key principles should be nonpartisan, its leaders have aligned themselves with Trump and parts of the Republican Party. There have been months of infighting over the movement’s campaign strategy.

In his concession speech, Lahn said MAHA is a “real movement that has legs.”

“That says that corporate interests, lobbyists, career politicians, that we are putting them on notice tonight because the movement is just beginning here and now.”