More Americans Disapprove Than Approve of Obamacare Health Care Law

Imagine that, in 2016 a majority of Americans still thinks Obamacare stinks …

According to a PEW Research Center poll, a majority of Americans still have a negative view of Obamacare. Five years after the law where Nancy Pelosi stated, we needed to be passed to find out what was in it,” 54% of Americans disapprove of Obamacare. Hot Air opines, “One interesting finding of the poll is how little opinions have changed since Pew began surveying the topic in early 2012. It appears positions on both sides of the aisle have fluctuated a bit over time as big events such as the disastrous roll-out or the Supreme Court ruling become news, but things gradually return to the same basic standoff.” However, it marks yet another failure and a broken promise to Republican voters who voted in GOP majorities to the House and US Senate as they claimed they would abolish Obamacare. Guess what, they lied, just like Obama did. Republican politicians did nothing to stop Obamacare. And the establishment Republicans wonder why Donald Trump looks like he might be the Republican party presidential nominee in 2016?

The public’s views of the Affordable Care Act, which were evenly divided following the Supreme Court’s ruling last summer upholding a key section of the law, are again more negative than positive. Currently, 44% approve of the 2010 health care law, compared with 54% who disapprove of the law.

In July 2015, after the Supreme Court upheld the federal government’s ability to provide insurance subsidies through federal exchanges, nearly equal shares approved (48%) as disapproved of the law (49%). Over the prior two years, somewhat more disapproved than approved of the law.

However, the balance of opinion about the law’s impact on the country has grown less negative over the past three years, even as slightly more continue to see the impact as negative than positive. Currently, 44% say the law’s impact on the country has been mostly negative, 39% say it has been mostly positive and 13% say it has not had much of an effect. In December 2013, amid the flawed rollout of the health exchanges, opinions about the law’s impact on the country were much more negative than positive: 49% saw its impact as largely negative while fewer than half as many (23%) said it had had a positive effect on the country as a whole (22% said it hadn’t had much of an effect).

Since that point, positive views of the law’s impact on the country have increased 16 percentage points (from 23% to 39%), while there has been a modest decrease in negative views (49% then, 44% today).