Ugly poll numbers via The Hill:
Just 15 percent of people say they have personally benefited from ObamaCare, although more than one-third believe it has helped the people of their state, according to a poll released Monday.
Most Americans — a total of 56 percent — say they haven’t felt directly affected by the Affordable Care Act. Among those who have felt affected, more people say the law has hurt them than helped them, according to polling by National Public Radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Twenty-six percent of U.S. adults say they have been personally harmed by the healthcare law since its passage — a fraction that likely reflects those in the poll who said they have noticed rising healthcare costs in the last several years.
Don’t read too much into that last graf. Health care costs have been rising faster than inflation since around the time health care became something more than mere palliatives. We’re getting richer, we’re getting older, and medical care is becoming more and more effective. So of course we choose to spend more on medical care. None of this is news to policymakers, which is what made President Obama’s lie about saving your family $2,500 a year so rancid.
In other words, if someone’s biggest complain about ♡bamaCare!!! is that it has raised their prices, you can safely bet that they haven’t been affected by the law much or at all — yet. Barring reform or repeal, their turn will come as increasing millions of Americans are dumped onto the ♡bamaCare!!! exchanges.
What should interest us right in the here & now is that a program as far-reaching as ♡bamaCare!!!, and one which spends and transfers so much wealth around, still manages to personally benefit a mere 15% of the American people. Even as ♡bamaCare!!!’s vaunted expansion of coverage stalls and stalls again, it would have to more than triple its perceived benefit before a majority of Americans were personally and positively affected by the law. By any measure, that’s a failing grade — and unlikely to get much better.
That right there is why the law as it stand is ultimately doomed.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member