There are a lot of interesting findings in the new Pew poll about the Affordable Care Act, released Sunday, but the most reliable and stark one: Americans really don’t like the law. They disapprove of it by an eleven-point margin — the biggest since Pew started asking about it.
More Americans already say the law has affected them negatively than positively — 20 percent to 17 — and even more believe the law has already hurt the country, 38 percent thinking it’s had a “mostly negative” effect to 24 percent thinking it’s “mostly positive.” Plenty of people say there hasn’t been too much of an effect so far, but asked to predict the long-term effects of the law, even more people are pessimistic, with a full 47 percent thinking it will have a mostly negative effect on the country as a whole.
And surely in part thanks to the consistent, growing unpopularity of the law itself, for the first time in years (the question has varied slightly), Pew found that people trust the Republican party over the Democratic party on health care, 40 percent to 39 (this could be a bit of an outlier, but the trend is slowly in the GOP’s direction). It’s important not to make to much of one poll but if this holds up, it’s a big deal, though both delay-reform-replace and defund-Obamacare Republicans will surely argue that their strategy is what’s engendered this improvement.
