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many supporters of the new healthcare law claim that although Obamacare is unpopular, voters do not want to see it repealed.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 And that is all they are saying when supporters of Obamacare say the voters want it 'fixed' and not repealed.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 Would you like to see Obamacare repealed or would like like to see it fixed or made better. On the flip side, why don't they ask: Would you like to see Obamacare repealed or would like like to see it become even more expensive, have even less coverage and even lower quality of healthcare, cause more joblessness and at an even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 The bottomline is that if the people say they are against Obamacare than they are saying they want it repealed. | Nevertheless the argument that people don't want to see the ACA repealed, they want to see it fixed persists.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for some odd reason, other than Rasmussen, no one seems to be conducting many polls on whether Obamacare should be repealed.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. |
0 Comments
|