In the midst of open enrollment for Obamacare, there is plenty of bad news for health law supporters, from skyrocketing premium rates to diminished insurer participation. Public opinion remains steadily opposed to the law.
After a fluid first few months in 2009 as the plan got underway in Congress, public opinion of Obamacare settled into a consistent trend in early 2010, with opposition outweighing support—often by a sizable margin.
Gallup’s tracking, for instance, shows that since the law took effect in 2013, a majority of Americans have consistently disapproved of it, ranging from a low of 48 percent in July 2015—just after the Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the law’s federal subsidies—to a high of 56 percent.
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Repealing Obamacare would free Americans to purchase more secure health insurance than either Obamacare or employers offer. Every day Congress waits, the problem of pre-existing conditions gets worse.
Congress should replace Obamacare as Mr. Trump pledged during the campaign.
Incredibly, some congressional Republicans are mulling a partial repeal—keeping the parts of Obamacare that supposedly protect sick patients, but instead make coverage worse and that are causing insurance markets to fall apart. There is even talk about keeping Obamacare’s billions of dollars in bailouts to insurance companies—including billions that a federal judge ruled unconstitutional—and using the money to replace Obamacare with Obamacare-lite.
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