“There are thousands of people coming across the border,” said Laabs, 71. He noted that both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed providing public health care to immigrants without legal residency as presidential candidates in 2019, a position that Harris’ home state of California has enthusiastically embraced. “We cannot support the whole world,” Laabs said.

The two main political parties will pick presidential nominees at their national conventions, and Biden and Trump are widely expected to be their choices. Republicans will gather in Milwaukee in July. Democrats will convene in Chicago in August.

Biden is trying to make health care a key issue ahead of the Nov. 5 election, arguing that he has slashed the cost of some prescription medications, lowered health insurance premiums, and helped get more Americans covered under the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. He has also been a strong supporter of reproductive rights and access to abortion, particularly since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade two years ago.

“The choice is clear: President Biden will protect our health care,” claims one of Biden’s campaign commercials.

Trump has said he wants to repeal Obamacare, despite multiple failed Republican attempts to do so over several years. “The cost of Obamacare is out of control,” Trump wrote last year. “I’m seriously looking at alternatives.”

Even Democrats who back Biden say the president must make it easier and cheaper to get medical care.

“I signed up for one of the Obamacare plans and got my cholesterol and blood sugar tested and it was like $500,” said Mary Vils, 63, a Democrat who lives in Portage County in central Wisconsin.

She strongly supports Biden but said people are feeling squeezed. “We’re fortunate because we had some savings, but that’s a lot of money out-of-pocket.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, said he understands “the frustration that people have.”

Evers has repeatedly attempted to expand Medicaid to low-income adults who don’t have children, which all but 10 states have done since the enactment of Obamacare in 2010. The state’s Republican-controlled legislature has repeatedly blocked his efforts, yet Evers is trying again. Expanding Medicaid would provide coverage to nearly 90,000 low-income people, according to his administration.

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