Greg Sargent points us to an interesting new CNN poll about Obamacare. It asks the usual question about favoring or opposing the law, with the usual results. The basic question shows that Obamacare is unpopular by 40-59 percent, but when you add in the folks who “oppose” it only because they wish it were more liberal, it flips to 57-38 percent. In other words, if you confine yourself to garden variety conservative opposition to Obamacare, there’s not nearly as much as most polls suggest.
But then there’s another question: Has Obamacare helped you or your family personally? About 18 percent say yes. How about other families? Do you think Obamacare has helped anyone at all?
And guess what: A huge majority of Republicans and conservatives don’t think the law has helped anybody in this country.
Among all Americans, the poll finds that 18 percent say the law has made them and their families better off….Meanwhile, 44 percent say the law hasn’t helped anybody — a lot, but still a minority.
Crucially, an astonishing 72 percent of Republicans, and 64 percent of conservatives, say the law hasn’t helped anyone. (Only one percent of Republicans say the law has helped them!) By contrast, 57 percent of moderates say the law has helped them or others. Independents are evenly divided.
Perhaps these numbers among Republicans and conservatives only capture generalized antipathy towards the law. Or perhaps they reflect the belief that Obamacare can’t be helping anyone, even its beneficiaries, since dependency on Big Gummint can only be self-destructive. Either way, the findings again underscore the degree to which Republicans and conservatives inhabit a separate intellectual universe about it.
Maybe I shouldn’t be, but I’m a little more dismayed by the news that even a large number of moderates and independents don’t think Obamacare has helped anyone. In a way, that’s more disturbing than the dumb—but predictable—knee-jerk Republican view that automatically produces a “no” whenever the question relates to something positive about Obamacare.
I guess the lesson is that liberals still haven’t done a very good job of promoting the benefits of Obamacare. Maybe that’s an impossible task since, after all, it’s not as if you can expect the media to run endless identical stories about local folks who finally got health insurance. Still, it’s a funny thing. If you passed a law that gave cars to 10 million poor Americans, pretty much everyone would agree that some people benefited from the program. But if you pass a law that gives health insurance to 10 million poor Americans, lots of people think it’s just a gigantic illusion that’s helped no one. What’s more, the number of people who believe this has increased since last year’s rollout.
Why? Certainly not because they think health insurance is worthless. Just try taking away theirs and you’ll find out exactly how non-worthless they consider it. Is it because they don’t think Obamacare policies are “real” health insurance? Or that all these people had health insurance before and the whole thing is just a scam? Or what? It’s a peculiar view that deserves a follow-up.
