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With the exchanges opening for its second year, Gallup has found that support for the Affordable Care Act remains low at 37 percent. I have to wonder about how those answering are coming to this opinion. After all, there is tremendous evidence as to the success of the Affordable Care Act, and Gallup also found recently that about 70 percent who are actually obtaining coverage through the exchanges are satisfied. This number is comparable with the number who are happy with other forms of coverage such as Medicare and employer-paid health care.

It appears that those who are unhappy with Obamacare aren’t the ones who are most directly affected. Most likely this polling result comes from all the dishonest information being spread by the right wing, with many people who are not directly affected at present expressing dissatisfaction with a law they do not understand. The latest noise about the statements from Jonathan Gruber, which do not amount to anything very meaningful, may have further affected polling results.

The Affordable Care Act also receives less support than it might because many of those who stand to benefit in the future don’t realize it. Besides providing affordable coverage for millions who could not obtain coverage in the past, the ACA protects those with coverage from their employer, guaranteeing that they won’t be unable to obtain coverage should they become seriously ill or lose their job. This had been a common cause of bankruptcy in the past, but many people are not going to appreciate this benefit if they are not undergoing such problems.

Another problem for the Affordable Care Act is that it makes it easier for Republicans to blame anything wrong with health care on Obama, even if the Affordable Care Act is not involved. For example, although the ACA provides additional benefits for Medicare beneficiaries, many who receive these benefits do not realize this. On the other hand, they are blaming Obama when their pharmacy plan increases their copays, even though this has nothing to do with Obamacare.

This does not mean that the Affordable Care Act is perfect. It is built on top of a faulty health care system, correcting several of its problems. However the bulk of the old system, with all its problems and inefficiencies, have continued. With Obamacare so unpopular, I am surprised that there is not more effort by supporters of a single payer plan to promote this as the solution to the problems of Obamacare, as opposed to Republican proposals which would resume all the problems we had in the past.

Updated from a post at Liberal Values

graphic via shutterstock.com