Obamacare repeal is flailing because Obamacare is working
by Ezra Klein at Vox
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/18/15987252/obamacare-repeal-working-mcconnell
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The Monday night collapse of Mitch McConnell’s Better Care Reconciliation Act has many causes, but the least discussed, and most important, is this: Obamacare is working, and that’s why the Republican replacement effort is failing.
We have gotten used to discussing the Affordable Care Act mainly in terms of its problems, and those problems are real. There are pockets of the country in which it is working poorly. Deductibles are too high, and premiums are volatile. The Trump administration has worked hard to sabotage the insurance exchanges and drive insurers out of the marketplaces.
But focusing on the problems obscures the overwhelming reality: The Affordable Care is popular, it is working, and on every dimension that voters care about, it outperforms the Republican alternatives. And that makes it damn hard to replace.
Poll after poll shows more people now favor the Affordable Care Act than oppose it. It has higher approval ratings than Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan, or the Republican Party. It far outperforms the Republican replacement plans: A new Washington Post/ABC News poll found voters prefer Obamacare to the Republican health bill by a 2-to-1 margin — 50 to 24 percent. You rarely see numbers like that in American politics.
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