Obamacare Is Wildly Popular Among The Enrollees Who Actually Use It

The Kaiser Family Foundation has come out with its latest survey about how Americans feel about Obamacare and healthcare in general. For the most part, ever since the ACA was enacted, surveys have shown that about half of the country wants to either repeal or change the law and other half is relatively satisfied. It was always a little unclear how many of the people who wanted to change the law actually wanted to expand it. A Kaiser poll from 2015 shows that the public has consistently been pretty evenly divided on the issue.

Earlier this week, Kaiser released a new survey that showed a clear majority of Americans want to either keep Obamacare or see the details of the(mythical) Republican replacement plan before the law gets repealed.

The biggest complaint about Obamacare has always been the high deductibles, the cost of prescription drugs, and the high premiums for those who do not qualify for subsidies. All of these problems, of course, could be solved by making the problem offer greater subsidies but that would have made the program more expensive and created even more Republican opposition to getting it passed.

Now I think I'm a relatively well informed guy and keep up with the news pretty religiously. But I don't think I had ever seen a poll of how only Obamacare users felt about the program. Obamacare only has about 20 million enrollees compared to the US population of around 318 million, so it is a small fraction of the population that is directly effected by the ACA. Most Americans probably have no direct or even indirect contact with Obamacare or its recipients. Therefore, their views are probably more likely colored by what they hear in the media or their own particular partisanship or tribalism. The views of that greater population are what Kaiser has measured in the polls above. So imagine my shock when I found a recent survey that showed that consistently 80% of Obamacare enrollees are very satisfied or somewhat satisfied with the coverage they have received.

Geez, you think Democrats might have wanted to highlight this result for the last few years rather than letting the GOP and the media define Obamacare they way they did. And you would think that an independent media might have also made this clear. But that group no longer exists in the mainstream.

Think about where we are today. Republicans are contemplating ripping health insurance away from 20 million Americans who are overwhelmingly happy with the coverage they are receiving. They have denied Medicare expansion to millions more over the last six years. As I have pointed out, even if the repeal vote does not succeed, the uncertainty over what the GOP might do and the resulting uncertainly in the future market may force enough insurers to pull out of the exchanges and destroy Obamacare anyway. The resulting collapse of the private insurance market and other externalities would probably cost another 10 million Americans their health care coverage. In any sane world, the GOP would be laughed right out of the building. It is a credit to their impressive propaganda machine and the supine American media that the repeal proposal is even taking seriously.

On a personal note, I am an Obamacare enrollee and am satisfied with the coverage I receive, along with about 16 million others. I have already written about how I feel differently about acquaintances who voted for Trump and, therefore, voted to deny me health insurance. And I know that I, along with at least 16 million other Americans will never forget the Republicans who will vote for repeal.