If President Donald Trump and Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are dreaming of doing some slight revision in the Trumcare/McConnellcare bill and getting it through the Senate by offering naysaying GOPers lots of campaign money or talking about how vital a win is, their efforts are likely to be undercut by the latest poll: the support may be a tad higher than having sunburn. Some more vulnerable Republicans may not wish to take the equivalent of political arsenic:
Support for the Senate GOP’s healthcare legislation stands at just 17 percent in a new NPR poll.
Slightly more than half of all respondents, 55 percent, disapprove of the legislation to repeal and replace ObamaCare.
Pollsters also found that 46 percent of Americans want ObamaCare to be more far-reaching, while only 7 percent want it to do less.
The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll, which surveyed 1,205 adults between June 21-25, has a margin error of 2.8 percentage points.
Senate GOP leadership on Tuesday decided to delay a vote to advance the legislation until after the July 4 recess.
As of Tuesday, nine GOP senators had announced their opposition to the bill. But Republicans can only afford to lose two votes, assuming no Democrats support the bill.If Congress is unable to repeal and replace ObamaCare, the NPR poll notes just 6 percent of Republicans surveyed would blame Trump. Half said they would blame congressional Democrats and 20 percent would blame GOP lawmakers.
As is the tribal reality in American politics, those who don’t like this result will say the methodology was lousy or say it was a KPBS/NPR poll therefore its outcome was planned in advance. If the poll had come out with numbers in their favor they’d tout it. But it fits in with other polls.
The the other show numbers not quite as stark but also make it clear passing it will not be a political bonanza for Trump, McConnell or the GOP.
Just 38 percent of voters approve of the Republican plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll conducted before Senate leaders pulled the latest version of their bill in an effort to win over more GOP votes.
That’s fewer than the 45 percent who disapprove of the Republican health care bill. Another 17 percent say they don’t know or have no opinion of the bill.
ix in 10 Republican voters approve of the bill, but a quarter of members of President Donald Trump’s party disapprove. The numbers among Democrats are a mirror image: Twenty-five percent approve, and 64 percent disapprove. But independents tilt against the measure: Only 30 percent approve, and 43 percent disapprove.The intensity gap is on the side of the bill’s opponents: Thirty-one percent of voters overall “strongly” disapprove of the bill, roughly double the 16 percent who “strongly” approve.
The results are similar to voters’ views of the health care bill that recently passed the House — though the wording of the poll question was changed in this new survey to reflect the Senate’s consideration of its own measure.
The Affordable Care Act is significantly more popular than the House GOP plan to repeal and replace the law, according to a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The survey, released Thursday as Senate Republicans unveiled a draft of their own healthcare reform legislation, found that 41 percent of Americans say ObamaCare is a good idea while 38 percent say it is a bad idea.
By comparison, just 16 percent said they see the House GOP plan as a good idea — a 7-point drop from the 23 percent approval it had shortly after it was passed in April.
About 48 percent of respondents said that the House healthcare overhaul was a bad idea, according to the poll.
The poll results were released Thursday as Senate GOP leaders released a draft of their healthcare reform legislation.
Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said the Senate bill “tracks” closely with the House legislation, while President Trump expressed hope that the Senate would pass a plan “with heart” and said the upper chamber’s bill would be “negotiated.”
The Senate version calls for deep cuts to Medicaid and does away with ObamaCare’s individual mandate, which required people to purchase health insurance.
Former President Obama’s signature 2010 healthcare reform law long suffered low approval ratings, and Republicans have campaigned on repealing the measure for years.
But the ACA has found new popularity as the Trump administration and congressional Republicans work to undo the healthcare law.
According to the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, 39 percent said they do not want Republicans to continue their efforts to do away with the law, though among those respondents, 28 percent said that lawmakers should work to fix and improve it.
Perhaps McConnell will pay off out of his slush fund convince enough of the wavering GOPers to ram something through. And there will be yet another big celebration at the White House where Trump and the GOP leadership can praise a new bill and, not by mistake, rub the noses of their political opponents in a defeat as they do a very visible victory dance and trade high fives. But it will not change the fact that the bulk of Americans don’t like it and many Americans will have their insurance yanked away from them and left to get sicker…or worse.
But, then, it’ll make Sean Hannity, Rush and Fox & Friends happy and donors happy. Which is what matters.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.