Results of two new polls show voter dissatisfaction and fault finding with healthcare reform, including insurance plan cancellations and exchange performance. The degree of respondents' approval or disapproval varied based on what survey questions called healthcare reform, with approval ratings dropping 7 percentage points at the mention of President Barack Obama's name.
For instance, the MorningConsult National Health Care Tracking Poll surveyed a national sample of 2,008 registered voters online and found:
- Fifty-eight percent of independent voters said they now trust Republicans more than Democrats to handle the issue of healthcare.
- Fifty-four percent of respondents said they were less likely to trust Obama as a result of the troubled healthcare reform rollout.
- Six in 10 Americans blamed Obama for federal website glitches, with nearly two-thirds of respondents citing private technology firms as major contributors to the problems.
- Sixty-five percent of respondents said Obama broke his promise to Americans that they could keep their health plans if they liked them. Forty-seven percent said Obama's proposal to reinstate canceled plans signals he's willing to improve a flawed provision, while fifty-three percent saw this as a sign that the reform law is faulty.
- Five in 10 people blamed Obama "a lot" for individual market policy cancellations, while thirty-four percent of independents blamed insurers.
Moreover, showing a rose isn't necessarily a rose when it comes to healthcare reform, a new Gallup research poll found that how the law is labeled affects how much people approve or disapprove of it. Gallup asked mainly the same question about the Affordable Care Act in four different ways to randomly-selected groups of Americans.
Mentioning only the Affordable Care Act yielded the highest support, at 45 percent, while mentioning only "Obamacare" yielded the lowest support, 38 percent. Support for the law called by other names was 41 percent, according to Gallup.
For more:
- read the MorningConsult poll results
- see the Gallup poll results