Americans Starting To Like Obamacare Forcing Them To Have Cheaper, Better Insurance

Here is some excellent news for Republicans running for president on the "I'm gonna murder Obamacare DEAD because it is the worst thing EVER, and everyone HATES it" platform: not every single American is opposed to that! And yet:  

This month’s Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds public opinion of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) continues to be almost evenly split, with 43 percent reporting a favorable view and 42 percent reporting an unfavorable view. The share with a favorable view exceeds the share with an unfavorable view for the first time since November 2012, albeit by one percentage point, and the difference is within the survey’s margin of sampling error and is not statistically significant.

But here, look at this graph that shows you a certain trend in attitudes toward Obamacare. See if you can spot what it is!

The orange line represents people who watch too much Fox News and still believe President Obama is going to death panel your baby and take away your crappy junk insurance and force you to have cheaper, better insurance, because he is a tyrant like that, and the blue line represents people who hate America and freedom. Then there are the 15 percent of people who have been living under a rock for the past five years and have no opinion at all about Obamacare, but you cannot seem them because they are invisible. There's your opportunity for outreach, GOP!

But here's where it gets even better for Republicans. Turns out there are still plenty of really dumb people in America who don't realize that Obamacare is evenmorefiscally conservative than the Congressional Budget Office predicted it would be:

Only 8 percent correctly answered that the law is now costing the government less than originally estimated, while half think that it is now costing more, 2 in 10 (18 percent) believe it is costing about the same as originally estimated, and a nearly quarter (23 percent) say that they don’t know.

So you Republicans can keep insisting that Obamacare is bankrupting America, and just about every single person in the country won't know you are dead wrong, and it's the opposite of that!

And as for the plan to repeal every single word of Obamacare and replace it with tax cuts and magical unicorn poop? A whole 29 percent of Americans are down with that, so as long as you don't count the rest who want to keep at least part or all of it, or even make it bigger and better and more socialistical, you should definitely be able to win the White House with that message. Yay for you!

It's really hard to understand why Americans do not universally hate Obamacare and want to kill it with fire and are even learning to stop worrying and love it after all. Sure, it's saving hospitals billions -- with a "b" -- of dollars because patients don't have to get their basic health care from emergency rooms anymore. And yes, it has saved grandmas and pas in Oklahoma $191 million on their prescription drugs, and probably other states too, we're just guessing. Andmaybeall the Obamacare horror stories have turned out to be fake, and it's actually kind of impossible to find anyone whose life has been ruined by it, even though Republicans have tried real hard. 

Andperhapsthere are people who, in spite of themselves and everything they believe and all the times they voted for Reagan, have come to appreciate Obamacare, and now they are so afraid Republicans are going to take it away from them, they are actually thinking about voting for (shudder!) Hillary Clinton. Like this one dude, but he is probably the only person in the entire country who has realized that easier access to affordable health care has made made his life better, and how much worse it would be without it, so he's thinking his lifelong devotion to the GOP is coming to an end.

So long as he's the only one who feels that way -- and he probably is -- Republicans who want to get rid of Obamacare completely have nothing to worry about.

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[ Kaiser Family Foundation via National Journal ]