Buried deep within last week’s Marquette University Law School poll results — the same poll that showed Mary Burke’s campaign has managed to harness the raw animal magnetism of Michael Dukakis reciting the Congressional Record on Ambien — was the “revelation” that Wisconsin residents still haven’t warmed to Obamacare.
According to the poll, just 39% of state residents currently hold a favorable view of Obamacare, while 50% have an unfavorable view. That’s a slight improvement from January’s poll, when only 35% had a favorable view and 56% an unfavorable view. Before October, when HealthCare.gov dashed out of the gate like a drunk prairie chicken, 42% had a favorable view and 48% an unfavorable view.
Ironically, the poll results were released around the same time Obamacare garnered some of its best headlines to date. On Thursday, the administration announced that Obamacare sign-ups had exceeded 6 million — short of the original goal but better than the revised target the administration put in place following the botched rollout. (UPDATE: On Monday, government officials told the AP that the original goal of 7 million sign-ups may be reached after all as a result of a deadline-day surge.)
The day before, conservatives resurrected their weary “King Obama” meme after the administration gave an extension (beyond the March 31 sign-up deadline) to people who had already started filling out HealthCare.gov applications, forgetting that George W. Bush had once given seniors signing up for Medicare Part D a months-long reprieve. (Apparently, Republicans have it in their heads that providing people with lifesaving health insurance is a high-stakes game of Chutes and Ladders and — no fair — Obama just cheated! Again! Mom!)
It’s clear that public opinion hasn’t yet caught up with the surging fortunes of Obamacare, as evidenced by the Marquette Law School poll. For one thing, the horrible HealthCare.gov rollout has left a lasting impression that the ACA was DOA. Secondly, the “if you like your plan, you can keep it” debacle has sown mistrust in the administration. Finally, a steady stream of B.S. from the Koch Brothers and their confederates in the conservative media has poisoned the public against reform.
Indeed, for evidence of the Kochs’ determination to sabotage the law, one need look no further than Julie Boonstra — a verified Obamacare success story — who was cynically used by the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity to make Obamacare appear soulless, expensive, and downright deadly. (Note: I have no doubt that there are some real people who have been negatively affected by Obamacare, but apparently not enough that a well-funded, highly motivated group monomaniacally focused on destroying the law at all costs can find them.)
But there are plenty of reasons to love Obamacare. For one thing, lots of people have acquired affordable health care who otherwise would have been SOL.
Conservatives love to play the terrifying anecdote game, but for every phony Julie Boonstra horror story, there are countless heartening tales about people whose lives have changed immeasurably for the better because they can now get health insurance — or can get it for far less than they were paying pre-Obamacare. (The ever-insulated Ted Cruz discovered this recently when he asked his Facebook followers whether they were better off with Obamacare. He received a deluge of responses from people who had been helped — and even saved — by the law.)
Just as importantly, Obamacare is well on its way to achieving its primary goal — lowering the number of uninsured Americans. Of course, Republicans are fond of dissembling on this point. For instance, John Boehner has actually tried to claim that more people are uninsured because of Obamacare, and recently on Meet the Press, the National Review’s Rich Lowry asserted that most people signing up at HealthCare.gov had already been insured before the law took effect (that’s mostly false, according to PolitiFact). And during a recent segment on MSNBC’s All in With Chris Hayes, the host fought with Americans for Prosperity spokeswoman Jennifer Stefano, who not only tried to (again, falsely) claim that just 14% of Obamacare enrollees had previously been uninsured, but also made the laughable claim that people making $94,000 a year were now eligible for Medicaid. (Under Obamacare, people making 133% of the poverty level can receive Medicaid, so Stefano’s claim seems unlikely. I didn’t actually check her math — for much the same reason I don’t look under the covers each morning to see if my thighs have turned into Christmas hams.)
So, desperate to undermine Obamacare (and, surprise, Obama himself), Americans for Prosperity, et al., have launched a full-court press against the law, propping up spurious claims that are as easy to disprove as they are to spread — urban legend-style — throughout the country. The truth? Last month, Gallup released a poll showing that the rate of uninsured Americans had dropped precipitously since the launch of Obamacare to its lowest level since 2008 — and that poll was taken before the recently announced enrollment surge.
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Finally, countless people who were basically screwed before because they had preexisting conditions can now get insured. They don’t have to stay at jobs they hate, don’t have to worry about being bankrupted if they get seriously ill, and most importantly, don’t have to drop over dead in an emergency room because they couldn’t go to the doctor.
Now, I know it’s fun for Fox News and other conservatives to play the “Obamacare is the worst thing since Hitler, slavery, and nonalcoholic beer” game, but let’s conduct a little thought experiment.
Let’s imagine that the protections guaranteed by Obamacare had been part of the health care status quo, and then suddenly those protections were stripped away. Imagine the horror stories you could dig up and package into tidy 30-second commercials. Jane Doe is now going to die because she has a preexisting condition and can’t get insurance. John Doe, who lost his job through no fault of his own when Wall Street cratered the economy, had previously been able to scrape together enough money to buy a policy with the help of government subsidies, but now he can’t afford to buy insurance and, oh yeah, he just found out he has liver cancer. Have fun selecting the playlist for your funeral, John. Better luck next time!
As for people who really are paying more under Obamacare — often young, healthy people who aren’t eligible for subsidies — the law isn’t necessarily a bad thing for them either. Health insurance isn’t quite the same as home insurance or auto insurance. Chances are, you’ll go your entire life without burning your house down or getting into a serious car accident. But you’re almost certain to get sick eventually. And when you do, Obamacare will be there to protect you. In essence, the young will pay more now to subsidize today’s elderly, and when today’s young people are old, the next generation will subsidize them. Sounds a lot like Social Security, doesn’t it?
This law is unpopular now, but there’s no guarantee it will stay that way. Polls have consistently shown that Americans like almost all of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act but for some mysterious reason dislike Obamacare.
How could that be? I see only two possibilities: 1) Americans are completely insane or 2) someone’s been lying to them.
So to conservatives I can only say this: Keep slandering this law if you must. But if it ultimately succeeds, don’t try to take credit for it. Then again, I won’t be surprised if you do.
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