Many politicians in Washington continue to go through the motions of repealing the health care reform bill that became law last year. I say “go through the motions” because the health insurance industry doesn’t want the law repealed, just tweaked a bit. And it’s hard to imagine that a majority of Congress would ignore what the health insurance industry wants, no matter what they’re telling their constituents.
In the 2010 midterms many politicians ran on the promise of “repeal and replace” and won their elections. On the other hand, Americans, including those suffering from mesothelioma, seem to want something done about the old system, which has left millions of Americans uninsured while costs spiral out of control.
Politicians who are pushing for repeal of last year’s health reform law claim that’s what the American people want. However, a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health says otherwise.
The claim that a majority of Americans want repeal is based on polls that show a majority have an unfavorable view of the law, and the new poll shows this, also. However, what the Kaiser/Harvard poll reveals is that a substantial number of people who disapprove of the law want it expanded, not repealed.
The poll found that 43 percent of Americas do want repeal — 23 percent of this group wants the law repealed and replaced with a Republican alternative, and 20 percent want it repealed and not replaced.
However, 28 percent of respondents do not want the law repealed, but expanded. Another 19 percent want it left as it is. That’s 47 percent against repeal, versus 43 percent for repeal.
Of course, 43 percent is a sizable minority. But when pollsters tried to determine exactly what about the law people don’t like, the picture gets murkier. Many provisions of the bill are popular even among the group that wants repeal.
For example, 85 percent approve of seniors who have fallen into the Medicare “doughnut hole” getting discounted prescription medications; 79 percent approve of subsidies to help lower-income Americans buy insurance; 66 percent approve of regulating insurance companies so that at least 85 percent of premiums are paid out in benefits.
On the other hand, many of the things people say they don’t like about the health care reform law reveal confusion about the law. More than half of those polled seem to believe the bill allows government bureaucrats to dictate what health care they will receive, which is no more true than it was before the bill was passed. Six in ten Americans think the health care reform law will increase the deficit over the next ten years, but the Congressional Budget Office has said the law will reduce the deficit by $1.3 billion dollars.
The single most unpopular part of the bill is the individual mandate, which goes into effect in 2014. The mandate requires that most Americans obtain health insurance or pay a penalty. But when it’s explained that the mandate is necessary if insurance companies may no longer deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions, the “favorable” percentage for the mandate goes from 23 percent to 46 percent.
Pro-reform politicians think people will be won over to health care reform once they understand what it is and how it works. The danger is that it will probably take a few years for that to happen, and in the meantime anti-reform politicians will be working to weaken the bill by dismantling the parts the insurance industry doesn’t like. Full repeal is extremely unlikely, however.
This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2011 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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