As Obamacare starts up and heads toward its 2014 fuller implementations, headlines this week blared that the healthcare initiative — aimed at putting America more on par with other first-world countries that have single payer healthcare — had “tanked,” and that more than half of Americans opposed the measure .
When Obamacare starts, Americans will have had several years and dozens of Republican votes to repeal the act ahead of its implementation. But the idea that Obamacare (or the Affordable Healthcare Act) is massively unpopular falls apart under more precise examination of polling data.
This week, many conservative media sources trumpeted that 54 percent of Americans “oppose” Obamacare, suggesting that the current system in place remains preferable to more than half of those polled.
However, it turns out that the CNN Obamacare poll actually revealed that 35 percent of Americans oppose the act on the grounds of it being “too liberal.”
So what about the other nearly 20 percent that “oppose Obamacare” in that specific poll? Those poll participants actually believe Obamacare doesn’t “go far enough,” favoring a full-scale, European style single payer system for the U.S. — an outlier in the developed world in our approach to paying for health care services.
While the “Obamacare starts with 54 percent opposed” headline seemed to serve the notion the act was “shoved down our throats,” consistent polling has revealed that the majority of Americans remain ignorant to the actual provisions of the bill. Some prominent clauses include the elimination of denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions as well as a requirement that insurance companies spend 80 percent of premiums on actual healthcare.
CNN Polling Director Keating Holland commented on the poll:
“A majority of younger Americans favor the new health care law; support among other age groups falls as low as 31% among senior citizens. Only a third of whites support the law, compared to six in 10 non-whites. Obamacare also wins majority support in urban areas and in the Northeast, the bluest region of the country.”
As Obamacare starts, do you think costs will drop for average Americans?
