The Kaiser Family Foundation has released its Health Tracking Poll for January, this time focusing on the Affordable Care Act and the current case before the Supreme Court challenging the law. It's remarkable for one particular finding, just how cynical the American public is about one of the most revered of institutions, the Supreme Court.
That's probably the result of a decade's worth of very political decisions, from
Bush v. Gore to
Citizens United. The Court certainly isn't immune from the cynicism and distrust of political institution rampant in America, and justifiably so. Unsurprisingly, the majority of those asked, 55 percent, believe that the conservative court will find the law's individual mandate unconstitutional. The mandate itself is still highly unpopular with the "public more than twice as likely to have an unfavorable rather than favorable view of the provision (67% to 30%)."
However, the generally split attitude of the public toward the law as a whole is far more closely divided, 37 percent with a favorable opinion and 44 percent with an unfavorable opinion. But, and this is an important but, that unfavorable could include those who think the law needs to be expanded. Reinforcing that, more people would like to see the law kept and expanded than repealed: "the share of the public that favors expanding the law (31%) or keeping it in its current form (19%) remains larger than the share who would like to see the law repealed outright (22%) or repealed and replaced with a Republican-backed alternative (18%)."