Campaign Action
Senate Republicans need to be thinking long-term as they approach a vote on Trumpcare this week. Sure, their ever-shrinking base might in some masochistic way feel they deserve to have their health care taken away and will reward them for it, but the rest of their constituents are already plenty restless about this thing and the prospect of losing so much. So worried in fact, that for the first time since 2010, in a Kaiser Family Foundation monthly survey, Obamacare gets majority support.
Over the past year, Kaiser Health Tracking Polls have found a modest increase in support for the ACA and this month’s poll finds about half of the public (51 percent) expressing favorable views of the ACA while 41 percent hold an unfavorable view. This is the first month that favorability has tipped over the 50 percent mark since Kaiser Family Foundation began tracking attitudes on the law in 2010 and continues the trend found last month with the public more favorable towards the ACA than the replacement plan (51 percent vs. 30 percent).
Here's another thing they should be keeping in mind:
The majority of the public—regardless of partisanship—hold favorable views of Medicaid, the government health insurance and long-term care program for low-income adults and children. Three-fourths (74 percent) of the public say they have a favorable view of the program, including four in ten (37 percent) who have a “very favorable” view. In addition, six in ten say the program is working well for most low-income people nationally (61 percent) and seven in ten say the program is working well for most low-income people in their state (67 percent).
Some changes to the program, sadly including work requirements and drug-testing, get majority support, but only "about one-third support reducing funding for Medicaid expansion or limiting how much money each state gets from the federal government each year." That would apparently be the one-third that does not know a senior in a nursing home, since Medicaid covers 64 percent of them.
It keeps looking worse for Republicans. Check out the support—or lack thereof—for Trumpcare:
Just 11 percent of the total—and only 21 percent of Republicans!—strongly support the proposal. That support is shrinking significantly as the debate continues—11 points among Republicans since last month, from 67 to percent, and 14 points among Trump supporters, from 69 to 55 percent. No wonder Majority Leader Mitch McConnell feels compelled to rush it through.
Make your Republican Senator feel the heat. Call their office EVERY DAY at (202) 224-3121 to demand that they say NO to ripping health care away from millions of Americans. No on Trumpcare. Then, tell us how it went.
