Obamacare More Unpopular Than Ever
Written by Naomi Lopez Bauman
While the president and his political allies have been celebrating ObamaCare’s “success,” not everyone is sharing this sentiment. In fact, most people are now taking the opposite view.
According to a recent Pew Research Center/USA TODAY survey, more Americans disapprove of the Affordable Care Act now than when the law was enacted. Americans, now that they know what is in the president’s sweeping health law, don’t seem to like it. In fact, the law’s approval rating has barely budged, moving to 41 percent from 40 percent since the law was enacted in 2010. Meanwhile, the law’s disapproval rating has jumped eleven points to 55 percent from 44 percent.
One need not look much further than the calamitous technical challenges that continue to plague the healthcare.gov website, such as the nonexistent website payment system, the slag heap of broken promises from “if you like your health insurance, you can keep it” to the new law “will save the average family $2,500 per year,” the millions of policy cancellations to date and those slated for 2014, and the increased premiums, dramatically higher deductibles and narrow networks of providers under the law.
But rather than scrap this calamitous law, the Obama administration has unilaterally picked and chosen which parts should be enforced – and when. The administration’s numerous implementation delays are a tacit admission that ObamaCare is a failure and that politics trump Americans’ well-being.
The American public already understands the reality of this health -insurance scheme: ObamaCare is not affordable and is doing the opposite of what the president promised. It is time to go back to the drawing board to craft solutions that give individuals control over their health-care decisions and allow them to select options that best meet their own needs and preferences, rather than government-knows-best dictates.
Naomi Lopez Bauman is Director of Health Policy at the Illinois Policy Institute