News and Views

I got a phone call the other night that symbolizes how poll results can be misleading. The automated poll asked me two questions:
1) “Are you aware that the Affordable Care Act will raise your insurance costs?”
2) “Do you support the Affordable Care Act?”

The pollsters were obviously trying to prime the result of the second question; first tell you something bad about it, then ask how you feel about it. They could just as easily have begun by saying “Are you aware that the ACA will lower your insurance costs?”, since the impact is still being debated and varies from person to person and state to state.

Pew Research just published some related poll results which I trust are less biased. They usually do a pretty good job with polls.

They found that 43% approve of the ACA, and 52% disapprove. However, less than half of all those who disapprove (or about 23% of the total polled population) said that lawmakers should work to make the law fail. The other (larger) half of the disapprovers said lawmakers should try to make it work as well as possible.

So the House is being pushed hard to take actions that less than a quarter of the population supports, at the risk of defunding the government and defaulting on national credit.

The poll also showed that there is strong ignorance throughout the country on the provisions of the ACA. Support for the act is strongly divided along party lines, as expected, but perhaps unexpectedly Democrats show greater understanding of the Act, including the individual mandate and state exchanges.

Personally, I am eagerly looking forward to October 1, when I can see what plans will be available to me. Starting January 1, I can have a policy that gives me full coverage, without the exemptions I currently worry about.

Instead of constipating the whole government over it right now, let’s implement and then if it doesn’t work there should be a strong consensus to cancel it. If it is as bad as they say, then it will be a disaster and Obama’s legacy will be a striking failure. But as Republican Senator Ted Cruz suggested people are going to like it so much that it will be impossible to remove once it is implemented.