In the debate on Obamacare, many supporters of the new healthcare law claim that although Obamacare is unpopular, voters do not want to see it repealed. They want it fixed. My reaction to this point is that of course anyone who is not too ideologically opposed to the new law would love it if everything about Obamacare suddenly started to work out fine. If the ACA became substantially cheaper, gave better coverage, provided better actual healthcare, didn't cost jobs, and all this without costing taxpayers anything than of course the majority of voters would support it. The questions are why isn't Obamacare doing that already and can any minor tinkering or fixes bring that about. I don't think most people believe that it can be fixed and most people believed it wasn't good for the country in the first place. But of course, if hypothetically, everything about Obamacare were better, the people would support it. And that is all they are saying when supporters of Obamacare say the voters want it 'fixed' and not repealed. I think if most people realistically thought it could be substantially made better, and that's what we should do rather than repeal it, they wouldn't say they are against Obamacare in these polls in the first place. Those people would probably consider themselves either moderate supporters or undecided. I would suppose that most who support the law would also like to see it fixed or made better. The question itself seems biased. Would you like to see Obamacare repealed or would like like to see it fixed or made better. On the flip side, why don't they ask: Would you like to see Obamacare repealed or would like like to see it become even more expensive, have even less coverage and even lower quality of healthcare, cause more joblessness and at an even greater cost to the taxpayer. What do you think the results of that poll would be. The bottomline is that if the people say they are against Obamacare than they are saying they want it repealed. | Nevertheless the argument that people don't want to see the ACA repealed, they want to see it fixed persists. This led me to want to research some poll results on what people are saying regarding repeal. In fact, for some odd reason, other than Rasmussen, no one seems to be conducting many polls on whether Obamacare should be repealed. And Rasmussen discontinued in early 2012 for the most part. About 140 polls taken between march of 2010 and December of 2013. Most were taken prior to December 2012. None since December 2013. Out of the approximately 140 polls featured on RealClearPolitics 139 favored repeal. Most by more than 10 points. So much for the voters wanting to 'fix' Obamacare and not repeal it. The only poll that didn't favor repeal was a CBS poll. It opposed repeal by 8% and was sandwiched by polls that favored repeal by 17% and 15%. But this gets no attention in the mainstream media. You keep hearing the point made that Americans don't favor repeal. So where does it come from? This is typical of the type of story that you see online and on the mainstream television news. Instead of just asking do you want Obamacare repealed, they ask: Do you want it repealed or would you like to see improvements? Would you like to see it have a chance to succeed first. I'll bet the Poll results on posted on Realclearpolitics just simply asked Do you favor repeal or not. That is the only fair way to ask the question. |
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Quinnipiac poll shows Colorado voters disapprove of Obamacare 59% to 37%. Independents disapprove with independents disapproving 62% to 34%
The reason for obamacare was to provide health insurance to 48 million previously uninsured people. To me if this law cannot come through on insuring atleast 90 % of these people it could easily be considered a failure without even looking at any other impact it is having.
In the months previous to the time it came to sign up for the exchanges there was lots of concern being voiced not only in the media but in the congress as well regarding the impact that enforcing the mandates would have. Senator Max Baucus, a democrat who helped writhe the law, referred to the implementation of obamacare as a "trainwreck" in april of 2013. He seemed especially concerned about the employer mandate. In July Obama signed an executive order to delay the employer mandate until 2015. All the concern about the implementation of the law and how succesful it would actually be at insuring the uninsured prompted president Obama to shift the topic away from that goal and talk about how according to him it is working great for the people who already have it. He was actually trying to downplay the importance insuring the uninsured. Emphasizing instead that 85% of the people already have insurance and it's "working just fine for them." He specifically pointed to some more minor aspects of the law that had nothing to do with employer or individual mandates. Now that the sign-up period for individuals is over we can analyze a little further. Just how many people have insurance that previously did not. The administration has told us about 8 million people have signed up for health insurance through the exchanges. We can't be sure how many of those actually paid, but it is probably most. It turns out however, although there are no hard numbers available, most of these people already had health insurance. A closer look at those who had health insurance would probably reveal that some had very inadequate but many had legitamate insurance, in some case comparable or better. The LA times broke a story that was picked that got huge headlines at NBC.com announcing that the number of uninsured has been reduced by 9.5 million. That number has been picked apart by critics already. 4.5 million of that is simply due to expanding medicaid. Some say medicaid was going to expand by over a million without any changes in the law. Nevertheless, we didn't need obamacare exchanges to expand medicaid anyway. The get 3.1 million because of the part of the law that allows children to stay on their parents insurance policy until they are 26 years old. But other surveys have said this only helped insure 1.4 to 1.6 million. Besides, once again, we didn't need obamacare to have this part of the law. How many have gotten health insurance through the exchanges who were previously uninsured? 1.9 million This is the real question. And according to the numbers it only comes to about 1.9 million. You might be able to add a little to that because some had truly inadequate health insurance by any reasonable standard - not just obamacare standards. But many who already had health insurance did have adequate health insurance. They didn't meet obamacare standards because they didn't their plan didn't cover birth control: even if they were a guy. Perhaps 3 million if you include the truly underinsured. Some of those who didn't have insuranc had the ability to afford it but chose not to have it. probably because they are young. You really didn't need obamacare for that either. Just pass a law saying anyone above a certain income has to buy health insurance. I would say maybe the uninsured has been reduced by maybe 1% o fthe population because of the exchanges. Or to put it in other terms, only a little over 5% of the uninsured have gained insurance because of the exchanges and that is if you unclude some under-insured. I don't know how many were truly underinsured of the previously insured, which came to about 6.1 million. I don't think you can justify making such a big change for such small results. Consequences of Obamacare? Stay tuned. Most observers seemed to think there were only going to be about 6 million new sign-ups, so 7 million is good news for the administration. Not getting enough sign-ups by the March 31 deadline could have meant larger than expected premiums or financial trouble for the insurance companies. One concern that still lingers is that some portion of that 7 million will not ultimately pay.
Critics also point to the greater purpose of Obamacare which was to to get health insurance for 48 million uninsured people. They say that most of the 7 million sign-ups already had health insurance or medicaide. Another point that should be noted is that Obama is taking credit for getting people insurance simply by expanding the eligibility for medicaide. They really didn't need to pass Obamacare for that. They could have just passed a bill expanding medicaid. Simply giving out more free health insurance paid for by the taxpayer. This raises concerns about cost and disincentive for people to better themselves so they can provide for themself. It should also be noted that the sign-up deadline has been extended two weeks. All website users need to do is check a box on the site saying that they tried to sign up but weren't able to complete the application. Atleast those were the latest numbers going back to July of 2013. Given the short fall younger applicants and overall applicants they may end up spending a lot more. As of March only a little more than 5 million have signed up and the administration said they needed over 7 million. What does this short fall mean? I think it means the insurance companies are going to have to raise their rates. Give me some feedback(pro or con on Obamacare
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