Poll: Most Want Obamacare Opponents to Move On
Now that the Supreme Court has upheld President Obama's health-reform law, one new poll suggests most people want the law's opponents to drop their repeal efforts and move on to other problems. Another poll suggests the public is as divided by the law as ever.
In the latest survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 56 percent of respondents said they prefer Obamacare opponents "stop their efforts to block the law and move on to other national problems," while 38 percent said they prefer those opponents "continue trying to block the law from being implemented."
Kaiser, a nonprofit, independent foundation that studies health policy and opinions, polled 1,239 adults beginning last Thursday, when the Supreme Court upheld Obama's health law under Congress's taxing power.
Predictably, responses broke down on partisan lines, but independents who do not lean toward either party also preferred Obamacare critics drop their repeal push by a margin of 51 percent to 35 percent. Respondents favored the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the law by a margin of 47 percent to 43 percent, Kaiser found.
While Democrats and Independents may want to move on, it is also clear that the decision did little to change opinions about the law itself.
A poll from CNN found that 50 percent of Americans agreed with Supreme Court's decision, while 49 percent disagreed with it. Not surprisingly, 81 percent of Democrats liked the Supreme Court decision while 81 percent of Republicans disliked it.
On the issue of the individual mandate, 48 percent in the CNN poll favored it, 51 percent oppose it. This is virtually unchanged from late March when 47 percent favored the mandate and 51percent opposed it. Republicans overwhelmingly oppose it (82 percent) while almost all Democrats (79 percent) like it.
Republicans, including presumptive presidential nominee Mitt Romney, have campaigned on a plan to repeal the law after November's election.
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Kaiser, on the other hand, found a slight bump in support for it after the Supreme Court's decision. In Kaiser's polling, the respondents were split, 41 percent to 41 percent, on whether they support or oppose the law. That was an increase in support from May, when Kaiser found respondents opposed the law 44 percent to 37 percent.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released today corroborated that bump, with opposition slipping from 57 percent to 52 percent and support increasing from 43 percent to 48 percent.
The health law saw a similar bump when it passed Congress in March 2010. The law was unpopular before Congress passed it and Obama signed it, but Gallup showed a brief moment in which poll respondents favored the law immediately after its victory. A week later, it was unpopular again.