As more and more “features” of Obamacare kick in, and as prices soar while coverage shrinks, mood sours on Obamacare.
The latest Gallup poll shows More Americans Negative Than Positive About ACA.
The poll is not remotely a surprise.
In a summer that saw many insurers drop out of the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges, Americans’ support for the healthcare law continues to be slightly more negative than positive. Now, 44% of Americans support the law, also known as Obamacare, and 51% disapprove of it — similar to what Gallup measured last November.
Insurance giant Aetna decided in August to pull out of most of the healthcare exchanges it had entered in 2014 and announced it would not expand into any more states. This news followed similar announcements from other major insurers such as United Healthcare and Humana. There have also been reports that the cost of individual plans offered through health insurance exchanges in many states is likely to jump significantly in the coming years as federal subsidies disappear.
Percentage of Americans Saying ACA Hurt Their Family Rises to New High
Currently, 29% of Americans say Obamacare has hurt them and their family, up from 26% in May, and the highest Gallup has measured to date. Meanwhile, the percentage who say the ACA has helped their family dropped from 22% to 18%. The bulk of Americans, 51%, continue to say the law has “had no effect.” As more provisions of the law have taken effect over the years, the “no effect” percentage has dropped from the first reading of 70%, in early 2012.
More Americans expect the ACA to make their family’s healthcare situation worse in the long run (36%) than say it will make it better (24%). Thirty-seven percent say they expect the law not to make much difference. The current percentage who believe the law will make things better reflects no change since Gallup began asking this question in 2012.
No Effect?
51 percent claim Obamcare has had “no effect” on them.
Actually, it has, but in ways that are unseen. Corporations have to pass on costs. And costs have risen. Prices have risen because of Obamacare.
Obamacare lowered the hours it took to be considered full-time. In response, corporations cut back hours. Those who had hours reduced or took on a second part-time job likely do not place the blame where blame should go.
Insurers pulled out. Even those who kept their insurer likely saw reduced coverage and higher co-pays.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
That would be the 44% who are exempt or who are being heavily subsidized….
Nailed it. Here’s how it affected my medical care: My doctor has turned into a drug and test salesman. Went Tuesday, for a follow up appointment and he scheduled me for 4 tests. Guess what… I am not going to schedule any of them. If you have “the good insurance”, they are going to play it for everything they can get. That’s the new game. Get it while you can because you ain’t gonna get it when you can’t.
Sounds like that 44% is very similar to a certain 47%…
From Gallup re: their Obamacare survey numbers:
“Because Republicans are much more likely (46%) than Democrats (9%) to say the new law has hurt their family, it is possible that some of those who say “hurt” are giving a political response rather than an actual report on the law’s effect on their lives.:
Yeah, the political reason that they now have to pay for insurance instead of ignoring health issues that would’ve easily been avoided with preventive care and the, when it’s so bad, going to ER, being hospitalized for days, unable to pay bills, file for bankruptcy and then hospitals and insurers recoup losses by raising premiums on everyone with insurance.
Shame on you for perpetuating bullsh#t without context!
Worst law in my lifetime!
Again, it (ACA) is the largest tax ever imposed in US history. That’s what the ACA is, as declared so by the Supreme Court decision upholding it.
For someone to say they “are unaffected by it” is to say “I don’t know what it is”. What they don’t know, certainly can hurt them.
The existing health care system is unsustainable with or with out ACA. When 20% of health insurance costs can be siphoned off to pay ridiculously high admin and CEO payroll and big pharma can jack up drug costs unilaterally, there is a never ending cost increase spiral.spiral. At some point the annual increases for insurance and co pays become unsustainable when no one is getting pay increases.
The poll might want to conducted after this years increases in healthcare cost for those that do pay. My brother who lives in Santa Fe, in New Mexico read me an article from the local newspaper stating the rates were increasing 38%.
Many forget the full implementation does not happen until our fearless leader is out of office. If the waiver expire for those that do not know if you read that little form your employer handed you with the dollar amount the employer paid will become taxable income. I think many people will finally wake up to reality after the government took over 22% of the economy.
That’s the big one. The reporting of employer contribution on the employee W-2 statement. No way in hell anyone sees that coming.
Poor Joe Sixpack is going to get taxed for that like it’s income. My employer paid over $9700 for me in 2015, plus I myself paid in another $2,000+ and had substantial co-pays on top of that. Now Obama thinks I should get taxed on the portion the employer paid, too?
The world as we knew it ended with the ACA . You’re not going to believe the new world at our doorstep.
Wah Wah Wah
The lines in those charts are “statistically flat”
Nothing to see or listen to here, except for more bellyaching
Learn how to game the system and you too shall be free
Obamacare is pure neoliberal ideology. Structure “liberal” government programs so that they are provided by the private sector utilizing competitive market forces. It doesn’t work for healthcare because healthcare in the United States isn’t a market. You cannot have a market without price and quality discovery. Which is not possible in these United States.
Obamacare is simply a payoff to insurance companies for supporting Democratic Party politicians.
Jon, I agree and thanks for the affirmation!’
Exactly so, and to assuage the downtrodden trial attorneys who normally see the insurers as their prey, the Democrats opened up the whole new gender pay gap albatross as a means for the lawyers to have something new to litigate.
Poor Republicans! They are always last to the party and all the booze has been drank by the time they get there!
Mish
We live in Texas. Our premiums are going up 60% next year although we have never filed a claim! Savings? what savings?
Even if I thought it had no affect on my insurance or treatment, the law lowered the HSA limit from $5k to $2.5k, so that’s about $800 in extra tax per year.
Very simple fact for me – in 2009 my BCBS policy covering 6 people cost me $9’000, with a $2’800 deductible for the family.
In 2016, because of Obamacare rule changes last July 15th, I was forced to leave my plan and go into the small business plan we have as a company. My now 5 people plan cost $36’000 including a $5’000 contribution to an HSA. My deductible is now $6’500.
You think it affected me economically?
Single Payer is on the way and Obamacare probably speeded up the inevitable progress toward that. We are the only industrialized country in the world who doesn’t already cover healthcare in this manner. I have always been a capitalist at heart but after watching MULTIPLE friends and family die from a for-profit healthcare system and being affluent enough to travel extensively in the world and experience health-care services in Canada, Great Britain, Germany, and Belgium I look forward to single payer coming to America. It is the only area of the economy I feel that way about.
Enforce USC 15. Health care will become affordable.
Think about abolishing medical licensing as a solution. Read chap 9 Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman.
Have the approval ratings really changed much to before the ACA was passed? I recall then Pelosi told us that Congress had to pass it before we could find out what was in it that a minority of Americans supported it. I think it was about 45% back in 2009. So that number hasn’t really changed much. What gives with that?
The poor, sick people will love Obamacare. The working middle class and rich will hate it.
The medical care system in American has been f%% up for over 40 years. It’s always been a ‘pay to play’ system. Anybody who has paid any attention should know that. Obamacare only stepped a little harder on the gas pedal. That’s all. So let’s all be honest.
I want a medical care system that has mandated price lists on the walls of every doctor’s office and every hospital and requires out of pocket payments just like in any other store. Insurance should only exist for hospitalizations and catastrophic emergencies. Every drug store should also maintain a price list for all pharmaceuticals. The patient should pay out of pocket. Cut the insurance companies out and the prices will PLUMMET!
But like Trump says – we live in a rigged system. The rule makers are collecting HUGE sums of money and benefits while schmucks like us are hung out to dry.
Many of the early supporters of Obamacare saw it as a path to Single Payer as Obamacare was structured to protect the interests of the health care monopolies that cause prices to rise and fixed little to nothing. Obamacare’s flaws are bringing about its downfall.
Like Garry Gentry said, single payer is the way to go.
“Like Garry Gentry said, single payer is the way to go.”
Truly free market is the way to go. The VA is single payer.
Enforce USC 15.
VA follows the Beveridge model, where the government also employs the doctors and owns the hospitals. An example of single-payer is Medicare. US has it for people aged 65+ and countries like Canada, Taiwan etc. have universal coverage.
Medical prices were soaring before the ACA, which is why voters demanded help in the first place. If bankers would just stop printing outrageous medical inflation (not adequately tracked by the CPI), most people could afford to just pay cash at the doctor’s office.
Personal responsibility 101 —
coverage thru an employer has not changed much since the ACA took effect. only effects individual plans, so get a job with an employer who offers full health & dental coverage.
people want the best of everything (college, autos, health care, housing) but don’t think they should have to pay for it or think they are entitled to finance for as long as they need
I’m self employed and have the highest deductible plan to keep my monthly premium the cheapest. My monthly premium went up 70% from pre ACA to post ACA. But I still have a massive deductible and have to pay out of my pocket for everything until I hit $6,500 annually. I went it to have my Dr. check out some very minor stuff for 15 min and was referred to a specialist who looked at me for say 15 min. My bill was almost $400 out of pocket just for those brief visits. And will be $5,000-$6,000 out of pocket if I get the minor issues they noticed resolved (all minor outpatient stuff and common preventative exams).
The ACA subsidy is a joke. As a single person you would have to make less than $30k a year where I live before even a tiny bit of subsidy kicks in. So even if you make say a very low barely sustainable income of $31k a year in the expensive area I live as a self-employed person, you still would have to pay at very high monthly premium with a $6,500 deductible for the cheapest ACA policy.
ACA made things more expensive. But it did get rid of insurance companies rejecting people for existing conditions (which was needed) and it did get rid of caps on what insurance would pay in case of a really expensive medical issue that exceeded caps.
It is just extremely expensive to get medical care in the U.S. especially if you are self employed.
Costs are only ‘passed on’ to the degree that they are new costs. For example, the ACA requires employers who provide coverage to offer coverage to the adult children of employees until they hit 26 years old (but not if the kids can get coverage from their own jobs). Cost that has to be ‘passed on’? Well in a sense but before the ACA what happened to the medical costs of 24 yr old kids? They were being covered either by the same thing or something else, if it was something else then the increased cost in one area is offset by lower costs elsewhere.
All in all the higher than expected costs in the exchanges are probably making employer provided costs lower. The 29% figure, of course, is irrelevant because 29% of people aren’t even in the exchanges. The question is either asking for people to make a guess about the macro-state of the health care system (and there more often than not the answer is usually “costs going up” versus “costs going down”) or is asking people to talk about their own health care budgets (in which case the answer is usually the same if for no other reason than individuals see costs increase as they age no matter what).