A new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows the Affordable Care Act (ACA) with its lowest ever level of support in their polling, a huge shift from September, when Americans’ view of the new health care reform law ran nearly even at 41 percent favorable versus 43 unfavorable. The October poll showed that 51 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view, against 34 percent who see it positively.
Kaiser has tracked the popularity of the new law since it was passed, and it’s been fairly popular some past surveys: in June of 2010, 50 percent of Americans liked what they saw with only 35 percent disliking it. But for the most part, the ACA favorability numbers have remained in the 40 percent range on either side.
Of course, many of the provisions actually in the health care law haven’t been implemented yet. Kaiser has a very handy breakout of what’s currently in effect by the law’s timeline and the areas of policy that each provision effects here. For instance, a majority of the insurance provisions have not yet gone into effect, including major (and some might say the MOST important) reforms like guaranteed availability of insurance and essential health benefits, neither of which will happen until 2014.
The second major point in the data was a huge drop in the number of people who perceive that the law will make their lives better. Only 18 percent of Americans think the new law will make them better off, a number which had been consistently in the high twenties except for the outlier of January of this year. Obviously AVA advocates, the Kaiser Foundation being one of them, would hope that this month is itself an outlier.
Amidst heavy news media coverage of Occupy Wall Street and the Republican presidential primary debates, and at a time when a generally discontented public wants Washington to focus on the economy and jobs, roughly half the public now reports having an unfavorable view of the health reform law, while about a third say they have a favorable view, a low point in Kaiser polls since the law was passed….While Democrats continue to be much more likely than independents or Republicans to support the law, the fall in favorability was largely driven by waning Democratic enthusiasm–the share of Democrats with a favorable view of the law dropped from nearly twoâthirds in September to just over half in October.
Democrats dropped eight points on ACA’s favorability, the largest single drop in Kaiser’s polling. Those considering themselves independents dropped by four points but within the range they have been vacillating, and the percentage of Republicans who view the new law favorably went down to eleven percent from a high of 24 only two months ago.
The new Kaiser poll used 1,226 live telephone interviews with American adults conducted from October 13th to the 18th. It has a sampling error of three points.
