Poll: Half of people in U.S. prefer Obamacare over GOP health care proposals
Half of people in the U.S. say they prefer Obamacare over replacement plans proposed by Republicans, according to a Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday.
The poll found 50 percent of people say they prefer Obamacare compared to 24 percent who prefer the GOP proposals introduced in Congress.
More than three-quarters of Democrats, 77 percent, said they favor the health care law championed and passed by their party in 2010 while 59 percent of Republicans support their party's current proposals. Nearly half of independents support Obamacare and 20 percent support the Republican plans.
This survey comes after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, announced Saturday that he would delay a vote this week on the revised health care bill. Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, will be absent as he recovers from surgery to remove a blood clot above his left eye.
But even with the vote delayed, GOP leaders are struggling to sell their revamped plan, released last Thursday, to their own conference. Two Republican senators -- Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine -- have already said they'll oppose the second version of leadership's health care plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, and one more could kill the bill.
The bill is not much different from the original: it would still end Obamacare's penalties for people who don't buy insurance, cut back an expansion of Medicaid and cuts to the entitlement program. Compared to the original version, the new measure includes several tax increases from Obamacare that were eliminated in the original bill: a 3.8 percent tax on net investment income, a 0.9 percent Medicare tax and a remuneration tax. It also includes $70 billion more than the first draft to help cover state-based health care reforms and an additional $45 billion to help states combat the opioid epidemic.
The poll surveyed 1,001 adults between July 10 and 13 with a 3.5 percentage point margin of error.