Well, twelve percent is the lowest of the low, surely it can’t be that bad, right? Wrong. The bill, known for some reason as the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which sounds Orwellian, is rather unpopular with basically everyone outside Washington, DC, Republican voters included.
First, the worst of the worst rating from a Suffolk University poll, via USAToday:
Just 12% of Americans support the Senate Republican health care plan, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds, amid a roiling debate over whether the GOP will deliver on its signature promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.
In the survey, taken Saturday through Tuesday, a 53% majority say Congress should either leave the law known as Obamacare alone or work to fix its problems while keeping its framework intact.
In other words, if this new bill is basically ObamaCare-lite, or ObamaCare Slightly Revised, then why bother? It’s just going to upset the market yet again, just when people are settling in to their Affordable Care Act deductibles and premiums.
However, a Marist poll finds the bill with a whopping seventeen percent approval, via NPR:
Just 17 percent of those surveyed say they approve of the Senate’s health care plan, the Better Care Reconciliation Act. Fifty-five percent say they disapprove, while about a quarter said they hadn’t heard enough about the proposal to have an opinion on it.
With mounting defections within the GOP caucus over the bill, leaders decided to delay a vote on the legislation until after Congress returns from next week’s July Fourth recess.
Alright, so 17 is greater than 12, but still in the toilet. Better move to the Fox News Poll that at least breaks into the twenties:
Overall, 27 percent of voters favor the Senate proposal, 54 percent oppose it, and 18 percent are unsure. For comparison, in polling conducted after the House health care bill passed, 40 percent favored it and 54 percent were opposed (May 2017). That’s the plan President Trump has called “mean.”
“It seems likely that voters are increasingly anxious about another significant change to their health insurance,” says Republican pollster Daron Shaw, who conducts the Fox News Poll along with Democrat Chris Anderson.
Really? They think voters might be a little “anxious” about another change to their insurance? How can this be? The House and Senate Republicans are using such straightforward language like “care reconciliation,” which oozes clarity.
People hate the Senate bill because it’s pages of nonsense few people understand, and fewer people want to digest. They see more upheaval in a market that’s still being assaulted (see here, here, and here for a few examples) by the ironically named Affordable Care Act, and see little upside in a bill which tweaks an already flailing system.
The drive to repeal ObamaCare has taken a bad turn for Republicans. At this point, Republican voters don’t like the Senate bill because it doesn’t actually repeal ObamaCare and create a market. Democrats don’t like the bill because they don’t want to repeal ObamaCare. In short, the Republicans in Congress, with Trump’s blessing, and sometimes backstabbing, have managed to unite both sides in opposition to a terrible bill.
