Share this Proof that Obama Lied about Obamacare

Why are so many Democrats bailing on ObamaCare?

 

The landmark health-reform law passed in 2010 has never been very popular and always highly partisan, but a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds that a group of once loyal Democrats has been steadily turning against Obamacare: Democrats who are ideologically moderate  or conservative.

Just after the law was passed in 2010, fully 74 percent of moderate and conservative Democrats supported the federal law making changes to the health-care system. But just 46 percent express support in the new poll, down 11 points in the past year. Liberal Democrats, by contrast, have continued to support the law at very high levels – 78 percent in the latest survey. Among the public at large, 42 percent support and 49 percent oppose the law, retreating from an even split at 47 percent apiece last July.

The shift among the Democratic party’s large swath in the ideological middle– most Democrats in this poll, 57 percent, identify as moderate or conservative – is driving an overall drop in party support for the legislation: Just 58 percent of Democrats now support the law, down from 68 percent last year and the lowest since the law was enacted in 2010. This broader drop mirrors tracking surveys by the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation and Fox News polls, both of which found Democratic support falling earlier this year.

Politically, the downward shift among moderate and conservative Democrats may be inconsequential. Senate Democrats have ignored more than three dozen House Republicans efforts to repeal the law, and even if they lost control of the chamber in the 2014 midterm elections Obama would surely veto any attempt to undo his signature legislative achievement.

But persistent skepticism of Obamacare continues to pose an obstacle to getting key parts of the law off the ground.

Read More: Washington Post

Obama Fail, ObamaCare Fail and Scandal Cartoons

Bad news just keeps coming for Obamacare

 

Obamacare goes fully into effect on Jan. 1, 2014, and the people who imposed it on a reluctant country -- President Obama and congressional Democrats -- are no longer celebrating their handiwork. The first prominent Democrat to wring his hands in public was Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., who two weeks ago voiced his fear that implementation of the law was becoming a "train wreck." This emboldened other Democrats to express their own forebodings after fingering their worry beads in private for the last several months. Things got so bad that even Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid -- normally Obama's most consistent Senate advocate -- embraced Baucus' train wreck metaphor.

It seems that nothing concentrates the mind like a hanging or an election in November 2014. A week after his public blubbering, Baucus threw in the towel on his re-election effort and, as National Journal's Josh Kraushaar reported Friday, plenty of his Democratic colleagues may be having similar thoughts: "In the face of intraparty criticism that implementation of his health care law will be a 'train wreck,' new polls showing support for the law near all-time lows, and even the Democratic nominee in next week's House special election calling the law 'extremely problematic' -- there's plenty of evidence piling up to believe health care will be a political millstone for Democrats in 2014."

Making the millstone even heavier was a study published this week by the New England Journal of Medicine. The study compared two large samples of low-income people. Roughly half of them got expanded health benefits through Medicaid while the other half did not. Megan McArdle summarized the results in the Daily Beast: "People who had more generous coverage consumed more health care. But they weren't healthier. In fact, the people who had less generous coverage reported being less worried about their health and taking less sick time, presumably because they weren't going to the doctor to find things to worry about."

That result was devastating news for Obamacare advocates, because, as The Washington Examiner's Philip Klein reported, "during the health care debate, liberals argued that government had a moral duty to enact legislation that expanded health insurance among lower-income individuals. This was rooted in the assumption that obtaining health insurance translates into improved health."

Read More: The Washington Examiner