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Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
Most Americans oppose health care law, despite supporting it's provisions
by Patricia Zengerle / Reuters
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Most Americans oppose President Barack Obama's healthcare reform even though they strongly support most of its provisions, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed on Sunday, with the Supreme Court set to rule within days on whether the law should stand.
Fifty-six percent of people are against the healthcare overhaul and 44 percent favor it, according to the online poll conducted from Tuesday through Saturday.
The survey results suggest that Republicans are convincing voters to reject Obama's reform even when they like much of what is in it, such as allowing children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26.
Strong majorities favor most of what is in the law.
A glaring exception to the popular provisions is the "individual mandate," which forces all U.S. residents to own health insurance.
Sixty-one percent of Americans are against the mandate, the issue at the center of the Republicans' contention that the law is unconstitutional, while 39 percent favor it.
"That's really the thing that has come to define the (reform) and is the thing that could potentially allow the Supreme Court to dismantle it if they decide it's not constitutional," Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson said.
In good news for Republicans at November's congressional elections, 45 percent said they were more likely to vote for a member of Congress who campaigned on a platform of repealing the law, versus 26 percent who said it would make them less likely, the survey showed.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the 2010 healthcare reform, Obama's signature domestic policy achievement, this week, possibly as early as Monday.
The political stakes are sky-high on an issue that has galvanized conservative opposition to the Democratic president, and how the court's decision is framed politically could influence the outcome of the November 6 general election.
Support for the provisions of the healthcare law was strong, with a full 82 percent of survey respondents, for example, favoring banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Sixty-one percent are in favor of allowing children to stay on their parents' insurance until age 26 and 72 percent back requiring companies with more than 50 employees to provide insurance for their employees.
PARTISAN DIVISION
Americans are strongly divided along partisan lines. Among Republicans, 86 percent oppose and 14 percent favor the law and Democrats back it by a 3-to-1 margin, 75 percent to 25 percent, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.
But in what could be a key indicator for the presidential contest, people who describe themselves as political independents oppose the law by 73 percent to 27 percent.
Opposition among independents has been growing. In a survey conducted in April, two weeks after the Supreme Court heard the case, 63 percent of them opposed the measure, and 37 percent favored it.
"Republicans have won the argument with independents and that's really been the reason that we see the majority of the public opposing it," Jackson said.
Republicans have dominated the political message on healthcare with calls to "repeal and replace" the law, condemned by conservatives as a government intrusion into private industry and the lives of private citizens. It passed in March 2010 with no Republican support in Congress.
Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has promised to repeal the law if he defeats Obama, although he has not offered a plan of his own. Obama, who says he modeled the measure on a healthcare plan Romney passed as governor of Massachusetts, has defended it.
Obama critics - some from within his own party - have also questioned the president for focusing on healthcare reform early in his term instead of doing everything he could to fix the struggling U.S. economy.
Democrats back the measure as an effort to improve the lives of Americans and essential to control spiraling costs that are undermining the country's overall economic health. Healthcare expenditures in the United States neared $2.6 trillion in 2010, over 10 times the $256 billion spent in 1980, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
A good portion of the opposition to the healthcare law is because Americans want more reform, not less of it.
The poll found that a large number of Americans - including about one-third of Republicans and independents who disagree with the law - oppose it because it does not go far enough to fix healthcare.
Seventy-one percent of Republican opponents reject it overall, while 29 percent feel it does not go far enough, while independent opponents are divided 67 percent to 33 percent. Among Democratic opponents, 49 percent reject it overall, and 51 percent wish the measure went further.
"If you add the people that oppose it because they think it doesn't go far enough, you get a majority of Americans, so it doesn't mean that healthcare reform is dead," Jackson said.
There was party division in Americans' view of the individual mandate. Overall, 61 percent of Americans oppose requiring all U.S. residents to own health insurance. Among Republicans, the percentage rose to 81 percent, and it was 73 percent among independents. But a majority of Democrats - 59 percent - favor the individual mandate.
The survey of 1,043 Americans was conducted from June 19-23. The precision of the Reuters/Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll has a credibility interval of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.
(Editing by Alistair Bell and Doina Chiacu)
Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
Once again the health care reform in the country, and all the confusion surrounding it lie around insurance company propaganda, and Republican posteuring.
From day one, most Americans had no clue what they were even being given, and that's because they were listening to parties deliver the message, and local church gossip, rather than spend the actual time to read Obama's proposed plan.
I have done this over and over again. I tell people "do you support [insert provision]", and people say yes, yes, yes, over and over again. Then I tell them it's "Obamacare", and they then suddenly 'hate it', don't want it, and even worse don't understand it.
So without getting into another "mine is bigger than yours" argument on here, just the comments alone on that Yahoo! page from Facebook shows how little people know about the health care reform.
For the 8,000,000th and last time.... YOU the lower and middle class WILL NOT have to PAY for someone else to have health insurance.
The Republicans already have been having you do that for the last 30 FUCKING YEARS. But that's okay, it's Obama's fault.
*end rant*
Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
The problem is the indivudual mandate, which was completely effing stupid. If you have that clout with the congress and senate, push a freaking public option and offer tax cuts to those who get health insurance, and tax breaks for employers who mandate employees getting healthcare.
This would have been a good bundle to pass through, you know when he could have passed some serious shit when they reupped the Bush tax cuts?
He blew his politcal capital load on that. And the sad part is, it's great plan. That individual mandate, the psychology of it even, just killed him.
Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
I put it on Nancy Pelosi and Don Knotts, I mean Droopy Dog, no, I mean Harry Reid, who are supposed to be advising him and helping him deal with congress and the senate.
Pure liberal arrogance. The same arrogance that made them think it was a wonderful idea to get rid of all the Blue Dogs and that Liberals could take their place in the south and midwest and still win. That's where you got a tea party congress, folks.
Losing Rahm Emanuel (who got pushed out by the libs, because he called them retarded for sabotaging the blue dogs) was a HUGE loss that he still hasn't recoverd from.
Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
Oh hell yeah. You don't send Harry fuckin' Reid, and Nancy Pelosi out there to carry your "bi-partisan" torch, two of the most liberal people to have ever served up there.
That'd be like sending John Boehner out to convince the world of the "pros" of exterminating gays. Nobody is ever gonna take it seriously or support it, just from the source its coming from, let alone the absurdity of it all.
Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
The GOP have always been better at conveying a message (true or not, although usually false) and in this case were able to define Obama's healthcare legislation instead of him. The article clearly shows this. Obama also placed too much emphasis on bipartisanship, which Hillary (for example) never would have done because she would have known better. Obama, naively, also believed that the GOP would most certainly embrace one of their own former ideas. I mean, what sane person/group would rebel against something they once advocated, right? Wrong.
Medicare for all would have been the best bet, but there were too many blue dogs that simply would not go along with that idea. That being said, while I was not happy with the insurance mandate it was the best option given the system we operate inside; it was a start. I always get a laugh out of the GOP and their screams of "Socialism." Not counting the VA system, our military healthcare, Medicare and Medicaid, our broken system is just that. Those who are not insured go to the ER to be treated for UTIs etc, or other issues that could have been addressed by regular doctor visits. This cost is picked up by those who are insured, which is in itself Socialism. We are already paying for millions of Americans healthcare indirectly. Obama's plan would have shifted this burden from the segment paying the most and required everybody to participate/spread cost, all while enriching the insurance industry. It's all very Republican, while the current system most certainly is not. In essence, the GOP have fought hard to keep Socialism alive and well through this saga, all while claiming the opposite.
Part of me wonders if the mandate will be upheld simply because it benefits the insurance industry so much. In the end I'd imagine they throw out the mandate while keeping most of the other aspects of the bill.
Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
With how they twisted arms to get that mandate pushed through, there would be no doubt a public option could have been passed, and I'd bet it would be more popular right now. And getting a tax break to get affordable health coverage (which is what they should've done) sounds a lot better than the government "forcing" you to get health insurance. Again, using the Bush tax cuts hostage, which Obama didn't have the balls to do, would have got a lot done. He could've coasted through his first term with what he could've got.
There's no way the mandate will survive, there's too much red meat.
Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
Agree with Cramer about "Medicare for all". It was the perfect short term solution to the problem. I suggested that when this health care crap first started under Obama. The issue goes beyond partisanship. They did some heavy duty lying to get this passed. The Obama administration claimed that the government would SAVE money on this. Please. The words government, save, and money should not be used in the same sentence.
1000000% agree with the article that Obama wasted those crucial first 2 years on this crap when there were so many other issues at stake. Country was being flushed down the toilet and he was more concerned with what brand of toilet paper had been used during the flush than why we were being flushed and how to reverse it. Now we're in the sewer and our trade deficits are so out of whack that an attempt to create construction jobs, manufacturing, and even war don't even put a dent in it. That new Bay Bridge was shipped here from China. We cant even build a fucking bridge anymore.
It's a tragedy that there's no viable candidate to oppose him. If there were ever a sitting president worthy of an ass kicking and humiliating landslide, it's this guy. Instead he's a two term prez. I remember the days when you actually had to accomplish something to get reelected. Bush and Obama changed that, probably forever.
Re: Americans oppose health care law despite supporting it
Why can't you guys just get your shit together and have health care for all like Canada does? If that frozen piece of ice with nothing but tundra and igloos, aka Amercia's hat, can figure it out why can't you guys?
Your government thinks way too much.
