Affordable Medicines Are Still Elusive: America’s Families Want Fair Prices

Time and again, people in America recount the increasingly grim trade-offs they must make to afford health care. Today, one in every two people fears bankruptcy due to an unaffordable medical event. For non-White adults, it is two in every three people. Economic hardships sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbate the impossible trade-offs families face: rent or food; food or medicine. Families are struggling to meet their basic needs and, in particular, face life-altering decisions about managing unaffordable medicines.

America’s families are still waiting for the federal government to act to reduce the burden of the high cost of prescription drugs and to protect them from unrelenting price increases. In June 2020 Hart Research Associates and Families USA completed a nationally representative survey of 1,203 voters across the country. This issue brief highlights recent polling that solidifies this mandate.