There’s more bad news for Obamacare. A new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows that 51 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of President Barack Obama’s signature health care law, while only 34 percent see it favorably.
Kaiser reports that this is “a low point in Kaiser polls since the law was passed,” and that the reason for the law’s declining popularity is rooted in decreased Democrat support:
While Democrats continue to be substantially more supportive of the law than independents or Republicans, the change in favorability this month was driven by waning enthusiasm for the law among Democrats, among whom the share with a favorable view dropped from nearly two-thirds in September to just over half (52%) in October.
The poll is the bitter icing on the cake for Obamacare’s bad month. In late September, Kaiser reported that Americans are paying more and more for their health insurance every year, with the price of family premiums increasing in cost by 9 percent between 2010 and 2011. Of that amount, Obamacare was responsible for between 1 and 2 percentage points, or approximately 20 percent, of the increase in premiums, according to Kaiser Family Foundation CEO Drew Altman. Obamacare was supposed to reduce costs, not increase it.
Then there’s the collapse of the CLASS Act — the long-term care insurance component of the health care legislation. In mid-October, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius admitted that the CLASS program can’t work, after months of insisting that it could. Sebelius said that “despite our best analytical efforts, I do not see a viable path forward for CLASS implementation at this time.”
Increased health care costs and an untenable long-term care plan? Is it any wonder that Americans aren’t happy with the law? It’s possible for Washington to enact reforms that reduce health care costs for all Americans, but Obamacare isn’t the way to do it.
