A strong majority of Americans believe the federal government should ensure everyone has health care coverage, according to a poll from Gallup released Monday. And that finding stands in direct conflict with President-elect Donald Trump’s desire to replace the Affordable Care Act, which has nearly halved the uninsured rate since 2013.
Gallup’s poll, conducted Nov. 6-20, found that 62% of U.S. adults think it’s the government’s responsibility to ensure all Americans have coverage—the highest percentage that Gallup has registered for this position since 2007. It’s a stance held by 65% of independents and 32% of Republicans as well as 90% of Democrats.
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Since Trump’s win in November, there have been questions about what may happen to the ACA, also known as Obamacare. Some congressional Republicans have floated weakening or repealing it. In October, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that if Trump won, Republicans would embark on a “massive reform” of the law. But once Trump disavowed the speaker’s remarks—that was “not President Trump’s policy position,” a Trump spokeswoman said at the time—Johnson changed his tune and complained that his words had been twisted.
Either way, eliminating the ACA would jeopardize coverage for more than 21 million Americans. It’s also bad politics. Sixty-two percent of Americans have a favorable view of the ACA specifically, according to an April poll from KFF. Indeed, it seems that once Americans stopped linking Barack Obama with his health care plan, they came around to the idea quicker.
With the strong public support for the law, it makes sense Trump would distance himself from the idea of gutting the ACA. He and an all-Republican Congress already tried and failed to repeal the law, in 2017, but after facing blowback from voters, Trump has kept mum on his specific plans for the ACA and what a replacement plan might look like.
In September, Trump said he had only “concepts of a plan” to address health care, but three months and a successful election later, that’s still all there seems to be. More recently, he went on “Meet the Press” and told NBC’s Kristen Welker that said concepts would be better than the ACA—but offered virtually no specifics on what his plan might look like.
“We have the biggest health care companies looking at it,” Trump said in the interview, which was released on Sunday. “We have doctors. We’re always looking. Because Obamacare stinks. It’s lousy. There are better answers.”
If Trump wants to avoid losing his House and Senate majorities, he should quickly figure out what these so-called better answers are. After all, health care issues were a central reason Democrats notched big gains in the 2018 midterm elections.
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