Public support for President Obama's heath care reforms are at their lowest since he signed them into law last year, according to a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Worse news for the president: Even Democrats are beginning to have second thoughts, with their support falling from roughly two-thirds to roughly half over the past month.
According to the group's pollsters, opinions were roughly split for most of the past year and a half, but things took a turn in October, with slightly more than half (51 percent) of all those surveyed saying they have an unfavorable view of the law compared to 34 percent who said they had a favorable view.
Reuters points out that the numbers are closest to July 2010's poll, which had a 50-35 unfavorable-favorable split, a few months after Congress passed the bill.
In addition, the new poll found that Americans were more than twice as likely to doubt the law will have any effect on their or their family's lives, positive or negative. The number of Americans believing they'll be "worse off" because of the law remains at 3 in 10, a number Kaiser says has remained steady since the passage of the law.
Reuters explains the political importance of health care reform approval, with an eye on the GOP presidential race:
As Republican candidates are gearing up in the effort to unseat Obama in 2012, the healthcare law has become one of the major sticking points and Mitt Romney's campaign has fielded shots at his own healthcare law in Massachusetts that, his opponents argue, closely mirrors Obama's.
Despite its ubiquitous presence in GOP presidential debate attacks on Romney, the poll found that the Massachusetts health care law does not generate strong opinions either way in the public: More than three-quarters of those surveyed said they simply didn't know enough about the law to judge it.
No comments:
Post a Comment