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Roughly a quarter of Americans actually think the new health care law has already been repealed, according to the latest poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation:
In the wake of the health reform repeal vote in the U.S. House and the ongoing legal challenges over the individual mandate, nearly half the country either believes that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been repealed and is no longer law (22 percent) or doesn’t know enough to say whether it is still law (26 percent). Roughly half of Americans (52 percent) accurately report that the ACA is still the law of the land.
Because the new health care law provides almost no one any tangible benefits for years, I thought the best case mid-term political scenario for Democrats was that people would continue to dislike it, but, without the law actually doing anything, it would stop being a top issue for voters.
I never guessed that the Republicans’ over-the-top repeal theatrics, combined with that fact that the law does almost nothing until 2014, would actually result in a large part of the electorate thinking the law has already been repealed.
This begs a new serious question though: can Republicans successfully exploit voters anger about the health care law in 2012 like they did in 2010 if large parts of the electorate thinks the law is already gone?
Given that the law is, on net, viewed unfavorably by voters, Democrats may ironically benefit politically from this confusion in the next election. It is tough to imagine how, in 2012, Republicans manage to motivate voter anger about a law that passed two years ago, when a large number of voters think it has been repealed for over a year. It could be that Democrats’ saving grace on this issue won’t be their PR campaign to convince voters to like the law, but simple voter ignorance.
The individual mandate is still incredibly toxic
Another note from the poll is that the Democratic establishment needs to come to terms with that fact that the individual mandate is political toxic and needs to be dealt with using an alternative. Even among Democrats and supporters of the law a majority wants to see it repealed.
28 Comments
The stupidity. It hurts!
The individual mandate may be politically toxic but as long as those insurance lobby checks keep coming, it’s going to stay right where it is. Even if Republicans manage to repeal every aspect of the law, you can bet the no drug price negotiation/re-importation and the individual mandate will remain. Hell, if the insurance lobby gets it’s way, the mandate will stay and the penalties will include prison time, which I’m sure the private prison lobby would love too. It’s a win-win! Well, except for ordinary people and they don’t write fat checks.
Voter ignorance is exactly what the administration wanted re this bill. I guess it worked. Pathetic.
The Rs seem to have a problem with timing. This and DADT and DOMA – the issues are peaking way too early to be useful to the Rs next year. By then a lot of people will figure it’s the Way Things Have Always Been.
Did Ed just have his Cronkite moment…?
They seem to be the anti Democrats. They come in shooting and lay about in a frenzy of partisanship and right wing ideology, then as you say, when election time comes, they’ve fired all of their bullets. Democrats on the other hand, SAVE all of their bullets and never fire a shot, preferring to duck, shelter and capitulate.
Ed Schultz: ‘Mr President if you don’t stand up for the American workers now, you don’t deserve another term’…
The individual mandate may or may not be constitutional. But, isn’t it necessary under this plan design to prevent ‘adverse selection’?
The problem is: there’s no Public Option, or Single Payer. (Thank you, BO.)
The bill is huge, right? How many pages long? Oh my, generations of attorneys will milk that, huh? If the devil is in the details, we might as well admit we’re in hell.
The solution? Great Caesar’s ghost, it’s easy: Medicare for All!
Too bad Keith is gone. It must be killing him to just sit back and watch.
Ed Schultz talks a good game but then when he’s disappointed, he always figures a way to justify it. First it was the public option. Ed was going to “stay on the president” about that. But he hasn’t mentioned that in months/ Then it was the 99ers. He wasn’t going to ever stop fighting for the 99ers but when was the last time that subject came up? I’d like to believe otherwise but this is Ed’s typical M.O.
Tis a shame, I’m sure Keith would’ve delivered some blistering SC’s on the ME and Wisconsin…!
KO does tweet, but it just aint the same.
After raising hell for weeks – Ed justifiably and rightly proclaimed that HCR without the Public Option was not acceptable under any circumstances.
Then Ed folded like a lawn chair on the Public Option. Ed decided that Obama’s HCR was the best we could do after all.
Ed is a dick ed.
Medicare for All.
Precisely. Same with the tax breaks for the rich, same with the continued ignoring of the 99ers…..
I think this is a brilliant suggestion…
It would be a twofold statement…! Mirrors the ME’s tradition of scorn…! ;-)
In all honesty, how can anyone accept the poseur that is Barack Obama?
He should take his own advice, and be a one-term president. But don’t bet the Buick on it. He is too vain and preening.
Someone here on FDL recently posted about Obama sticking his chin up, and how aggravating that pose was. I didn’t comment, but I wholeheartedly agree. It calls out for a banana cream pie. Oh, snap!
From NYT:
Roxanne Hart, a 43-year-old gal from Altoona, asked if he wanted to bowl with her. Mr. Obama and Mr. Casey shed dress shoes for bowling shoes—a blue and white Velcro number for Obama, size 13 ½ — and entered their names into the overhead monitor. It was BAR and BOB against ROX.
The internet has The Trojan’s Shoes at 9.5, 10.5, 11, 12 and 13.5 bowling boats.
To be fair to the “stupidity” and “voter ignorance”, the House did vote to repeal ACA last month. That is what made the twitter feeds and headlines, not the process. And our entertainment driven corporate news media doesn’t exactly like to report on process. In fact, in just doing a quick internet search on “house repeals aca” on Bing and wading through the first 3 pages of hits verifying that fact, I still can’t even find the H.R. number to the freaking bill the House passed in January. Yes, voters may be ignorant and stupid. But some are not so willingly.
http://www.house.gov/ Should be here
Love the Ayn Rand reference. As if corporations have ever supported the world or cared about anything other than the bottom line. Greenspan was a major Ayn Rand disciple, that worked out well, eh? The real ‘Atlas’ is small businesses, which generally operate with a conscience and harm no one. The ignorance is staggering.
These people! They remind me of the Maya Indians who were camped in the ruins of the great temples of their forebears of only a couple of generations prior, who could neither tell the newcomers who had built the temples nor what they were for.
Mussolini favored the same pose.
Can Dems keep voters excited in support of Health Cre Law so innocouous and ineffective, that people aren’t aware it’s in operation?
The saddest part of this is that Obamacare, modeled as it is on Romneycare, really does need to be fully repealed. Instead of forcing people to buy something that is already unaffordable, with absolutely no cost control measures in place to prevent insurance companies from raising rates, what should have been done was to pass single-payer. But the so-called left wasted a year and a half harping about an ill-defined “public option” that Obama made clear he had no intention of ever pushing for, and so what we ended up with was the bill Obama wanted all along: something that would please his corporate bosses.
I should think if the administration can keep waiving Obamacare for anyone politically connected enough to demand it, and convince the voters that every other aspect of the bill is dead as a doornail, this signature achievement of a progressive administration really will disappear as a factor in the 2012 election.
The GOP probably will have to keep voters riled up about greedy public sector unions instead.
And ironically, the 25% are probably 100% of the Bush dead enders (and probably a large percentage of the Tea Party people)… It would be better if they separated the poll to see how many of what types of people thought it had been repealed. Unfortunately, 25% is still a very large number of stupid people.
First the good news-We have national healthcare. Now the bad news-We have national healthcare. In spite of all the rhetoric and wringing of hands on our side the fact that we have something is remarkable. The problem is that the hash that is the bill is a piece of crap. Our energies should be directed to making it better, now while we have some power in the Presidency and the Senate. The country has been brainwashed about the bill and the left, starting with Obama has failed to point out the positives in a sufficient degree to swing the opinions of the people.
That is a major failure on our part.
Our attitude should be that we praise the bill as a good start and that it needs fixin’ and we are going to do it! While we lament over the lost opportunities, we are missing future opportunities.
National healthcare is one of the most important things this government has ever done and it has taken 100 years to just get it started. I think our President needs to spend more time defining the issues, and making a stand on this so important legislation. He has to give up some of the other things he is fighting for, if necessary, to make the time to do this.
We will have to decide if some of our pet peeves can be put aside while he concentrates on some of the most important things.