The State of Health Insurance in the U.S. Leading Up to the 2026 Midterm Elections: Healthcare Costs Play Into Voters’ Views on Affordability
The U.S. kitchen table has been host to American consumers’ challenging budgets for the persistently higher costs of food at the grocery store, petrol at the gas station pump, interest rates for houses and expensive durable goods like cars, and healthcare. U.S. adults’ ability to afford healthcare was at a five-year low, a Gallup-West Health poll alerted earlier this year in June. [The methodology calculated that only one-half of Americans felt “cost secure” for healthcare]. TIME magazine, writing from a mass/popular media point of view, wrote that, “Health care costs are becoming unsustainable.” Providing evidence for TIME‘s assertion, several reports
Gas ‘N Healthcare ‘N Voting in November 2026: A Last Pre-Midterms Snapshot on Health Politics on Main Street USA
Trust has been eroding between U.S. health citizens and the key stakeholder touchpoints that are meant to serve patients in America — whether health insurance plans, hospitals, providers, pharma and med-tech companies, and increasingly technology purveyors such as EHR platforms (most prominently, Epic) and AI for self-care information support. Some of the trust-eroding factors underpinning Americans’ growing sense of healthcare grievance are increased denials via prior authorization processes, cuts in health care access (such as Medicaid cuts, discussed in this POLITICO analysis), and increasing out-of-pocket spending coupled with low and unsatisfactory levels of expected customer service and lack of personalization
Food As the Universal Prescription for Health with the Grocer in the Health/Care Ecosystem – Learning from Ahold Delhaize
92% of consumers, globally, want to change their diet to be healthier; 8 in 10 global health citizens are actively trying to be healthier. But these health-intentioned people share challenges and frustrations in meeting these well-intentioned goals. Having spent the last month of living and working in 4 cities in Europe, I’ve had the opportunity to experience many dimensions of health and medical care in four European countries. One universal truth in the “I-know-what-I-know” category of evidence-based health is that (good) food bolsters, sustains, and assures health for individuals, families, communities, and nations. I saw evidence of this in conversations
When the Cost of Food is a Health Risk: Dollar Stores, Tariffs, Family Meals, and the Rising Cost of Food
“Shoppers are feeling less control of their spending on food and more concerned about food prices than in February 2026.” Researchers with The Food Industry Association discussed their latest research into U.S. consumers’ worries about food prices’ impacts on family meals this week, and their findings comport with what I see happening in peoples’ self-care choices at-home directly impacting nutrition as well as adjacent areas of retail health and home health life-flows. This data point meshes with trends in geopolitics, home economics, and consumers’ growing demand for self-care outside of traditional “front doors” compelling me to call-out the health risks
How Kroger and Instacart Are Delivering Food as Medicine, and Medicine with Food
A new study in Circulation, published 10 August 2026 found that home delivery of healthy groceries significantly improved blood sugar levels for people dealing with Type 2 diabetes. Now an alliance between the major grocery chain Kroger working with Instacart can scale such an effort for consumers embracing their own approaches to food-as-medicine, combining the delivery of groceries with prescriptions by enrolling in Kroger’s My Prescriptions and Online Pay apps. Kroger operates some 2,800 grocery stores serving 11 million people a day. The banners of Kroger include at least one name you
Americans’ Spending on Healthcare, Food, and Housing: It’s All the Costs of Living – eHealth’s 2026 Mid-Year Survey
Two in three U.S. adults believe that recent high inflation has negatively impacted their ability to pay for food, clothing, or housing in the past twelve months — and, due to inflation in the U.S., 42% of people said that they have skipped or delayed medical care in the past year — including 52% of folks not yet enrolled in Medicare, and 27% of Medicare enrollees. Such are the economic lives of American households as quantified in the eHealth Mid-Year Healthcare Pulse Report 2026, published in July 2026. eHealth surveyed over 1,000 Americans to
Jane will be working with EU- and UK-based clients in September and October 2026, collaborating with stakeholders in digital health, public/community health, retail health, and growing opportunities for health-at-home. Stay tuned to her updates here on Health Populi on-the-ground as she lives the digital nomadic work-life in Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and in London.
I was grateful to be Jasmine's first conversation-guest on her new podcast, "Aperture - Widen the Frame," where this expert in narrative medicine is bringing together the broad range of voices to sit at the table and address what health care needs: those humans in the health-system-loop who address health equity and empathy along with delivering evidence-based medicine for all.
Jane joined host Dr. Geeta "Dr. G" Nayyar and colleagues to brainstorm the value of vaccines for public and individual health in this challenging environment for health literacy, health politics, and health citizen grievance. Click onto the Pfizer Value of Vaccines site and you can watch four episodes covering the challenges with adult vaccination, the employer and health plan member's journey to vaccination, reimbursement, and collaborating for proactive prevention.