Almost No One Likes The New GOP Health Care Bill

And many people hate it.
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Americans are more likely to hate the GOP’s proposed health care bill than they are to even tepidly support it, according to a new HuffPost/YouGov poll.

The top-line numbers alone aren’t good for the bill’s proponents: The public opposes the bill released by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and backed by President Donald Trump by a 21-point margin ― 45 percent to 24 percent ― according to the survey, with 31 percent unsure.

The GOP plan also is on the wrong side of a significant gap in intensity, with just 5 percent strongly favoring the bill, and 32 percent strongly opposed.

Leading the charge are voters who supported Hillary Clinton, nearly three-quarters of whom say they strongly oppose the bill. Seventy-nine percent expect that it would be worse than Obamacare, with 53 percent saying it would make things worse for them personally.

Democrats are already counting the issue as a potential campaign vulnerability for the GOP.

“The data shows that Democrats are well positioned to win back [Obama/Trump voters] in 2018 and 2020, particularly thanks to the debate over the controversial Republican healthcare plan to repeal the ACA,” the progressive group American Bridge argued in a polling memo released this week. Internal surveys for the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA found that Obamacare was a more “potent” topic than the fight over the Supreme Court, the group told CNN.

Voters who supported Trump consider the GOP plan an improvement over Obamacare, but are less than unanimous ― and not especially enthusiastic. While 50 percent say they favor of the GOP bill, just 13 percent report favoring it strongly. Only 6 percent think the bill would hurt them personally, but fewer than a quarter say it would improve things for them personally.

Huffington Post

Most other recent polling has also found the public opposed to the Republican health care plan, although the numbers vary between surveys.

Trump for years cited the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office in attacking the Obama administration, but he and other Republicans spent several days smearing the CBO’s credibility in advance of its report on the GOP health care proposal. That campaign may have helped convince the majority of Trump’s supporters not the trust the numbers.

Nearly half of respondents to the HuffPost/YouGov survey ― 46 percent ― were aware that the Congressional Budget Office estimated the bill would increase the number of Americans who are uninsured, with 16 percent incorrectly saying it would decrease or not affect the number, and 38 percent unsure.

But after being told that the CBO estimates about 24 million more people would be uninsured under the Republican legislation, just 35 percent of Americans say they’re confident that figure is correct, with 65 percent either not confident or not sure.

Huffington Post

Use the widget below to further explore the results of HuffPost/YouGov’s survey,using the menu at the top to select survey questions and the buttons at the bottom to filter the data by subgroups:

The HuffPost/YouGov poll consisted of 1,000 completed interviews conducted March 16-17 among U.S. adults, using a sample selected from YouGov’s opt-in online panel to match the demographics and other characteristics of the adult U.S. population.

The Huffington Post has teamed up with YouGov to conduct daily opinion polls.You can learn more about this project and take part in YouGov’s nationally representative opinion polling. Data from all HuffPost/YouGov polls can be found here. More details on the polls’ methodology are available here.

Most surveys report a margin of error that represents some, but not all, potential survey errors. YouGov’s reports include a model-based margin of error, which rests on a specific set of statistical assumptions about the selected sample, rather than the standard methodology for random probability sampling. If these assumptions are wrong, the model-based margin of error may also be inaccurate. Click here for a more detailed explanation of the model-based margin of error.

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