Americans may disagree on plenty of things, but there is growing agreement on one issue. Healthcare costs too much.

A new national poll from Families USA found that 94% of registered voters want the President and Congress to take action to lower healthcare costs. When asked specifically about hospitals, 81% said the prices and fees hospitals charge are unreasonable, including 58% who called them “very unreasonable.”

Those findings capture how patients are feeling. Other data help explain why.

Hospital care is one of the biggest pieces of America’s healthcare bill. Americans spent more than $1.6 billion on hospital care in 2024, according to the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Hospital care now accounts for nearly one-third of the nation’s $5.3 trillion healthcare bill, which is only expected to grow in the future.

For people with private insurance, the trend is particularly notable. KFF found that inpatient hospital prices paid by private insurance increased 50% between 2014 and 2024, compared with 25% for Medicare and 19% for Medicaid.

And the gap is not small. In 2022, private insurers paid hospitals an average of 267% of what Medicare would have paid for the same inpatient and outpatient hospital services, according to research cited by KFF.

That research also noted that more than two in five (23% of) patients with a hospital stay in 2022 spent more than $3,000 out of pocket on health care.

That puts the new polling in perspective. When four out of five voters say hospital prices feel unreasonable, that sentiment is emerging alongside measurable increases in what the country, insurers and patients collectively spend on hospital care.

For patients, the debate over hospital prices is not an abstract discussion about healthcare economics. Increasingly, it is showing up in the bills they have to pay.

How are high hospital prices affecting you? Make your voice heard, tell us your story.

###

---