What will the biggest issues of the 2016 campaign be?
We all know the economy will be one of them. So will immigration. So will racial strife (wasn’t President Obama supposed to bring us together) will be another.
But here’s one that, at least at this moment, no one seems to be talking much about — but you can bet that the Republican nominee, Trump or otherwise, will be on top of: ObamaCare.
Why would that be?
Well, for starters, let’s look at how the public views this program.
According to realclearpolitics.com, there have been a total of four polls conducted so far this year which measure approval/disapproval of ObamaCare (that, in itself, is a finding: how come there aren’t more?).
The approval/disapproval disparity for every one of these polls is double-digit negative — with the average, 38.5% approval and 50.5% disapproval – a negative disparity of 12%.
But, it can be said, what about how things are currently progressing? Now that we are several years in and, presumably, the rough spots have been smoothed over, isn’t it possible that people will be happier with ObamaCare right now and that happiness will be reflected in their voting?
Fair question.
To answer it, I will post excerpts from this editorial at Investors Business Daily:
In the three-plus years since the ObamaCare exchanges opened, the law is teetering on the edge of the abyss. Enrollment is well below expectations, not enough young people are signing up, insurers are failing or dropping out of the program, and, by all appearances, premiums are set to spike even higher than last year.
Now a Kaiser Family Foundation survey released late last week shows that the public is far from satisfied with what Obama claimed was the be-all and end-all of reform.
Overall, just 38% have a favorable view of ObamaCare, which continues a more or less steady decline in approval since last summer. Fully 43% want the law either repealed or scaled back, while just 14% say that Congress should “move forward with implementing the law as it is.”
Nor does the public feel that ObamaCare solved much. In fact, the survey finds that health care ranks No. 4 on the list of priorities for this presidential election, right after jobs, national security and immigration.
When asked specifically about health care, the two top issues are the “Affordable Care Act” and “health care costs.” In other words, the biggest health care concerns people have right now are the law Obama signed, and the problem it was supposed to address.
The public’s view of the law is not likely to improve much when insurers start to announce their proposed rate hikes for 2017. Next year marks the end of ObamaCare’s $25 billion temporary “reinsurance” program, which was basically a subsidy scheme designed to hold down premiums in ObamaCare’s first three years.
By all accounts, now that insurers will have to price their policies to reflect the true cost of ObamaCare coverage, enrollees are in for the rate shocks of their lives. That could, in turn, cause further problems with enrollment as well as the stability and viability of the ObamaCare exchanges.
Does ObamaCare look like an election-year issue to you?
I’m assuming your answer is yes.
Does ObamaCare look like something the Democrat can run on as a positive, or something the Republican can run on as a negative to blame on the Democrat?
I’m assuming your answer is the latter, not the former.
Will this be an important issue in the upcoming campaign?
I’m not assuming, and I’m not asking. The answer is yes.
Watch and see.
