Obamacare Update: American Majority Goes From ‘Repeal-Replace’ To ‘Keep-Improve’

Stunning is a good word to describe the improbable shift the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act [ACA] has undergone since its creator, President Barack Obama, has vacated the White House and Donald Trump has occupied it for the last 98 days.

In the fall midterm elections of 2010 that followed the summer’s Tea Party inspired rage over the ACA, or Obamacare as Republicans have dubbed it, the revolt at the ballot box returned control of the U.S. House of Representatives to Republicans, a control they’ve enjoyed ever since. President Obama was mocked and ridiculed for his so-called government takeover of the health care market, when what the ACA really did was to lower costs for about 15 percent of the working population who couldn’t access affordable health care through their employer or who couldn’t afford the costs to buy a policy on the open market. Junk health care policies, once a standard of the industry, were no longer being sold, as health care insurers were required to offer packages with set standards.

Obamacare underwent trial by fire when the launch of sign-ups online tripped and floundered on day one, with Republicans cheering its failure while Democrats cautioned how well it would work if given the time and talent to make it work as sold.

Donald Trump surfed his way to the White House last year with a promise to repeal and replace it on day one. Not only did he not repeal and replace it on day one, he and Republican allies in the U.S. House couldn’t do it weeks later, as the bill Speaker Paul Ryan eventually brought to the floor would leave 24 million over time without the ACA they had come to believe in.

Now that President Trump has lost his first big battle over an issue he railed on during his entire campaign for president, the curious if not perplexing state of the state of the ACA is that it’s more popular than ever, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that shows 61 percent endorse keeping and improving it compared to 37 percent who still want to repeal and replace it.

The poll also throws cold water on the new plan by Republicans to coax Freedom Caucus members and GOP moderates to vote for it this time because states would be given the option to opt in or out of the ACA’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

By a margin of 70 percent to 26, U.S. adults want states to continue to protect people with preexisting conditions instead of letting state opt out, for fear health insurance companies would rig their policies to raise rates and other payments once forbidden by Obamacare.

The Post-ABC poll shows that, “beyond the criticism of GOP proposals for devolving health policy to the states, many Americans are leery about a major overhaul to Obamacare.”

The Center for American Progress breaks out preexisting conditions by age brakcets across all congressional districts. Here are Ohio’s 16 districts: