Poll: Voters Like Much of Health Care Law — But Not the Individual Mandate

Here is the summary from the WSJ:

Expect campaign strategists to pay close attention to new polling data on the politics of health care out Wednesday from the Kaiser Family Foundation. With health care already a major issue in the 2012 election, the nonpartisan policy group’s latest poll has seven findings message-crafters might find interesting:

1. The law is still unpopular but not as disliked as it was in October. In the latest tracking poll, 44% of voters held an unfavorable opinion of it compared with 51% who said in October that they viewed it unfavorably.

2. Among the 44% who viewed the law unfavorably, more than three quarters said they felt that way at least in part because of their “general feelings about the direction of the country and what’s going on in Washington right now.”

3. Even though there are more voters who don’t like the law than voters who do, some 50% want to keep it, and only 38% definitely know they want to repeal it.

4. Almost every individual element in the package is popular with a majority of the public, especially the requirements that insurers provide easy-to-understand plan summaries (84% like that) and  provide coverage to people regardless of their medical histories (67% like that).  Even increasing the payroll tax on higher-income earners to help fund Medicare is acceptable to more than half of the respondents.

5. A majority of people – 63% — don’t like the requirement that they carry insurance or pay a fine.

6. The poll showed that when respondents were told about specific provisions, the tended to like them, but the often didn’t know they were in the law. That lack of information could hurt Democrats. Much of the law isn’t scheduled to kick in until well after the election — 2014.  But starting this year, insurance companies must cover preventive care  (including contraception) without a copay. Most respondents think that’s great.

7. There’s still some misinformation out there. Some 56% of respondents thought that the overhaul included a new government-run insurance plan to be offered along with private plans. (It didn’t.) And 35% of respondents thought that the law allowed for a government panel to make decisions about end-of-life care for people on Medicare. (Again, it didn’t.)

The full poll results are here.  It has a margin of error of three percentage points.


For Romney supporters, this is an interesting poll. The public, and especially independents,  definitely like certain parts of the new bill. The parts of the law that people like are:

1) being able to keep kids on their parents insurance till age 26
2) barring insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions
3) barring insurers from having a maximum annual amount of money insurers will pay for catastrophic  or extensive care
4) requiring insurers to provide easy to understand summaries of health care plans
5) increasing payroll taxes on the wealthy to help fund Medicare
6) requiring insurers to cover preventative care without a copay

I think former Senator Bill Frist said it best when he said that about 70% of the new health care law is good. Most conservatives tend to forget that even if the Supreme Court rules ObamaCare as unconstitutional, the Supreme Court will only strike down the elements of the law that are unconstitutional leaving much of the law in place. If much of the law remains in place, who better to deal with the law than a man who has been immersed in a similar law for over six years? Of course Mitt Romney would be the most qualified.