Curing Obamacare Fever – Part Three: What The Public Really Thinks About the ACA

Let’s look at the polling (from USA Today, Wall Street Journal, Pew, Washington Post, Kaiser, Rasmussen- all in the last 12 days).
Here is my aggregate averaging the results from those polls.

The numbers you see most often are:

42% are in favor of it

52% are against it

6% have not made up their minds

Seems pretty clear cut. Right? Nope.

When you ask those opposed to it why they are opposed to it, here is what you get:

35% oppose the health care law because it’s too liberal

16% say they oppose the measure because it isn’t liberal enough.

My best guess is that the 16% do not want ACA repealed since any reform is better than no reform. Accounting for that the numbers look like this:

36% want the ACA repealed

58% want the ACA to go forward with improvements

6% have not made up their minds

Let’s dig a little deeper. Poll for each of the major elements in the ACA and here is what you get:

83% for insurance pool where small businesses and uninsured have access to insurance exchanges to take advantage of large group pricing benefits.

67% for providing subsidies on a sliding scale to aid individuals and families who cannot afford health insurance.

59% for requiring companies with more than 50 employees to provide insurance for their employers.

65% for allowing children to stay on parents insurance until age 26.

81% for banning insurance companies from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions

85% for banning insurance companies from cancelling policies because a person becomes ill.

52% for expanding Medicaid to families with incomes less than $30,000 per year.

As for how many Americans support shutting down the government as extortion to end the ACA, only 27 percent approve of that. Always good to keep in mind that whenever you see a percentage in a poll around 30% that supports something outrageous that it’s also about the identical percentage of hard core Republicans in the country…and is unfortunately to be expected.

So where does ACA stand right now?

Health Insurance Exchanges by State Ready for October 1:

States with federally run exchanges (27)
AL, AK, AZ, FL, GA, IN, KS, LA, ME, MS, MO, MT, NE, NJ, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, SC, SD, TN, TX,UT, VA, WI, WY

States with state based exchanges (17)
CA, CO, CT, DC, HI, ID, KY, MD, MA, MN, NV, NM, NY, OR, RI, VT, WA

States with state/federal partnership exchanges (7)
AR, DE, IL, IA, MI, NH, WV

As for states expanding Medicaid:

Committed to the Expansion (19)
AZ, GA, CO, CT, DE, DC, MD, MA, MI, MN, NJ, NM, NY, ND, OR, RI, VT, WA, WV

Learning toward Commitment (4)
HI, KT, NV, OH

Participating Through an Alternate Expansion Model (1)
AR

Considering the Alternative Expansion Model (4)
IN, IA, OK, PA

States Not Expanding Medicaid
Opposing Participation (15)
AL, AK, GA, ID, KS, LA, ME, MS, MN, NE, NC, SC, TX, WI, WY

Leaning toward Not Participating (7)
FL, MO, NH, SD, TN, UT, VA

The Affordable Care Act was passed by both houses of Congress, signed into the law by the President and affirmed as Constitutional by the SCOTUS. Most people think it is time to move on and focus on addressing real problems in our society, like jobs, economic justice, immigration reform, etc. Meanwhile, Republican politicians focus on their priority, re-election. All the turmoil, conflict and madness whipped up by the majority of Republicans in Congress…hysterical fear mongering about the ACA, threatening a government shutdown and a default on our debt that would plunge the U.S. and the world back into an economic tailspin…all of it is just about these self-centered Republicans pandering to the fanatics in their base so they can get re-elected. That’s it. Despite the Oath of Office they take, Republicans in Congress have proven that the only loyalty they have is to themselves and what they see as their entitlement to a position of superiority, wealth and power.

To adapt a line from Woody Allen’s film, Hannah and Her Sisters, “If The Founders came back and saw what’s going on in their name, they’d never stop throwing up.”

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