A new Rasmussen poll shows that 54 percent of Americans want Obamacare to be repealed, with the vast majority of those 54 percent “strongly” supporting repeal. In fact, according to Rasmussen, it’s easier to find an American who strongly supports repeal (44 percent of voters) than to find one who even “somewhat” opposes it (42 percent). Even worse for Democrats, a whopping 59 percent of independents want to see Obamacare be repealed.
The Republicans have a winning platform to run on with “Repeal, and then real reform,” but they need to offer voters a vision of what real reform would look like. For Republican congressional candidates looking for a sensible and understandable reform proposal to complement their commonsensical push for repeal, the 1-page small-bill proposal (www.smallbill.org) could be the ticket.
The Democrats had optimistically claimed that turning a deaf ear to the American people and passing their unpopular bill would make it popular. But Scott Rasmussen observes that “the overriding tone of the data is that passage of the legislation has not changed anything. Those who opposed it before now want to repeal it. Those who supported the legislation oppose repealing it.” Unfortunately for the Democrats, the former number is a lot bigger than the latter one.
Rasmussen’s findings comes on the heels of a USA Today/Gallup poll released a couple of days ago. That poll showed that, under Obamacare, Americans believe that the quality of their own health care would decline, the overall quality of health care in the United States would decline, their own health costs would rise, overall U.S. health costs would rise, deficits would rise, and the economy would suffer. And Americans don’t hold any of these opinions by slim margins. For each of these six questions, Americans think that things would get worse, rather than better, by a margin of at least 10 percentage points, and the average margin for the six questions is 21 percentage points.
Moreover, all of these numbers remain essentially unchanged from what they were six months ago in the same poll, save for the answers about costs. Back then, in September, by a 20-point margin (42 to 22 percent) Americans thought that their own health costs would rise, rather than fall, under ObamaCare; today, it’s a 29-point margin (50 to 21 percent). Back then, by a 6-point margin (40 to 34 percent), Americans thought that overall U.S. health costs would rise, rather than fall, under Obamacare; now that’s leaped forward 20 points, to a 26-point margin (55 to 29 percent).
All of this is true despite the fact that the USA Today/Gallup poll, which doesn’t screen its respondents for likely voters, has repeatedly shown Obamacare to be more popular than it has appeared to be in most polls. That trend continues: In Rasmussen’s latest poll, the margin between those who think that health costs would rise, rather than fall, isn’t 26 points, but 38 (55 to 17 percent).
Remember back when President Obama tried to sell Obamacare primarily on the basis that it would supposedly address Americans’ #1 health-care concern: rising health costs?
