Voters in seven Michigan and Wisconsin cities approved measures Nov. 3 that require their local governments to form citizen committees focused on healthcare affordability.
City Action Michigan, one of two nonprofits behind the effort, told WMUK in October that it wasn’t aware of the model existing anywhere outside Michigan and Wisconsin.
The measures passed in five Michigan cities: Benton Harbor (80%), Lansing (66%), East Lansing (69%), Kalamazoo (69%) and Portage (55%), according to Bridge Michigan. In Wisconsin, voters approved the measures in Eau Claire (55%) and La Crosse (66%), according to The Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.
“Voters sent a clear message,” Ryan Cohn, a spokesperson for City Action Michigan, told Bridge Michigan. “They want action on healthcare costs, and they’re done waiting for Congress to deliver it.”
The advisory committees will have seven or eight unpaid members. They will hold public forums on how healthcare costs affect residents, track state and federal lawmakers’ healthcare votes, and produce a healthcare action plan for city leaders every two years. In Michigan, plans are due by Oct. 1 of each even-numbered year, and city councils must hold public hearings on them by Oct. 15.
Some local officials have raised concerns about the cost to taxpayers and noted that cities have little authority over healthcare.
The committees come amid increasing scrutiny of healthcare affordability, particularly as more patients lose coverage and shoulder more costs themselves. Just 49% of U.S. adults were “cost secure” in 2025, meaning they could afford needed care, down from a 2022 peak of 61% and the lowest level in five years, according to the West Health-Gallup Center on Healthcare. Some health systems, such as Livonia, Mich.-based Trinity Health and Nashville, Tenn.-based HCA Healthcare, are seeing more patients delay care amid these pressures.
The committees also come as frustration over healthcare costs increasingly targets hospitals. In a Century Foundation survey of 2,002 registered voters in late May, 67% called stopping hospitals from charging excessive prices a top federal priority, a higher share than for any other cost-cutting option tested, with support across party lines, Becker’s reported in June.
