Ryan Streeter
Follow Ryan on Twitter
President Obama's got a lot to worry about, especially when you look at underlying trends that will likely affect voter turnout and preference in 2012.
The Kaiser Family Foundation released poll results today showing that Americans continue to give ObamaCare a thumbs-down.
Only 28% of Americans think the law will help health care costs get better, while 49% think costs will get worse. And a plurality, 41%, think health care quality will decline under the law, compared to just 26% who think quality will improve. On the cost front, a new study by economists who work for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services justifies respondents' concerns: they predict health care spending will spike up to 8.4% in 2014 when ObamaCare's main provisions all kick into gear.
The only positive point for Obama is that 49% of respondents think access to health care for the uninsured will improve. But that's hardly saying much since the law makes it illegal to be uninsured.
The poll report's authors point out that Americans don't necessarily understand what drives up the costs of health care (I'm not sure a lot of left-leaning health care "experts" do either), almost as if to suggest we should discount the public's dissatisfaction with the law.
But the poll also asked about cutting entitlements such as Medicare and Social Security to address the deficit and found majorities opposed. While this is a problem (we can't get out deficit under control if we don't reform these programs), I wonder if Obama's team finds it at all worrying that Americans seem wedded to Medicare and Social Security but are ready to ditch ObamaCare?
Comments