Healthcare law gaining in popularity

Remember
last August and those furious town hall meetings where people yelled at the
Democrats about healthcare reform? Have you accepted the new healthcare
reform law as a benefit overall? Or are you one of the voters who still hates
it?

Interestingly, polling has shifted on the popularity of the new law. While a
majority favored repeal (58 percent) in the months after President Obama
signed it into law at the end of March, a new survey by the Kaiser Family
Foundation shows opposition dropping to 35 percent from 41 percent in the last
month, and 50 percent of the public had a favorable view of the law, up from 48
percent. Support and opposition tend to be partisan, but the trendline is
certainly heading in the Democrats’ direction.

Republicans, who can’t exactly promise voters repeal since they would need
control of two-thirds of the Congress to override President Obama’s veto, are
campaigning on defunding the law. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) has begun a push
to stop the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which the law created to
oversee Medicare expenditures. Cornyn’s bill is co-sponsored by four other
GOP senators and is called the Healthcare Bureaucrats Elimination Act.

Democrats are, of course, scrambling to defend the appealing parts of the law,
such as the end of discrimination against the sick, but the sorry state of the
economy tends to drown out almost every other topic. Not only is joblessness
getting in the way of their sales pitch, but the calendar makes things more
difficult as well. A report in The New York Times highlights the likelihood that insurance
companies will raise their prices in anticipation of and response to
taking more sick patients onto the rolls, since the mandate to buy
insurance doesn’t kick in until 2014. The influx of healthy new customers could
bring those premiums down again, but that could be years away. And the rate
hikes are expected soon; some could feel them before the election.

Another challenge for Democrats facing reelection this fall, and one you could
say they brought on themselves.

WILL THE AFGHANISTAN DEBATE SHIFT BEFORE THE DECEMBER REVIEW?
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