GOP owns health care dilemma now, and voter skepticism
WASHINGTON >> Move over, “Obamacare.” The health care debate has shifted to ideas from President Donald Trump and GOP lawmakers in Congress, and most people don’t like what they see.
With Republicans in command, their health care proposals as currently formulated have generated far more concern than enthusiasm.
Even among rank-and-file Republicans, there’s opposition to changes that would let insurers charge higher premiums to older adults, and many disapprove of cuts to Medicaid for low-income people, according to a recent poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It also found more than half of Republicans at least somewhat worried about leaving more people uninsured, as the House plan is projected to do.
March polls by Fox News and Quinnipiac University showed overall margins of opposition to the GOP bill nearing or even exceeding those of the Obama-era Affordable Care Act, or ACA, at its lowest points — such as when the HealthCare.gov website went live in 2013 and promptly crashed.
“Republicans are taking ownership of the health care issue, and all the pleasure and pain of health reform,” said Drew Altman, president of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracks the health care system. “There has been a shift in
focus from the ACA itself to the Republican plans, and who might lose benefits as a result.”
Highlighting the stakes, the uninsured rate among U.S. adults rose slightly in the first three months of this year, according to Monday’s update of a major ongoing survey. The Gallup Healthways Well-Being Index found that 11.3 percent
of adults were uninsured, an increase from 10.9 percent in the last two calendar quarters of 2016.
“Only time will tell” if the uptick means the U.S. is again losing ground on health insurance, said survey director Dan Witters.
“A lot of uncertainty has been introduced into the marketplace through efforts to repeal,” Witters added. “That will scare people off who have real reason to believe that the ACA won’t even exist in a year. Plus premiums are now realizing
a big jump for the first time in the ACA era, so some folks may be priced out of the market even with income-based subsidies.”
Trump came into office with big, bold promises. In a Washington Post interview shortly before his
inauguration he declared his goal was “insurance for everybody,” hand-inhand with affordable coverage, “lower numbers, much lower deductibles.” Although Trump said he’d soon release a plan, none appeared.