New polling released exclusively to The Midnight Sun by Save Our Care, a group fighting efforts by President Trump and Congressional Republicans to repeal and replace Obamacare, shows Alaskans already have an unfavorable opinion of the bill.
The poll conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) surveyed 1,407 registered Alaska voters between March 10-12 and has a margin of error of +/-2.6%.
In that survey, the very first result offers what is likely to be surprising information to many: Obamacare is either viewed favorably as is or as needing only some changes by more voters than think it needs major changes or should be repealed outright, although the numbers are very close at 50% to 46%.
Those numbers get worse when voters are asked specifically about the bill being pushed by President Trump and Republican congressional leaders, known as the American Health Care Act (AHCA) — 42% of respondents said they favor that bill, while 49% said they oppose it.
That same question, asked a different way, gets almost identical results. While 52% of Alaska voters said they like congressional efforts to change Obamacare, 49% said they would be less likely — and only 41% more likely — to vote for someone who voted to actually repeal Obamacare. Independents were even less favorable — 58% of them said they would be less likely to vote for someone who voted for repeal.
And the numbers don’t get any better when real names are attached to the question.
Most troubling for the AHCA isn’t that it is already viewed negatively by Alaska voters — that could just be a result of the initial botched rollout of the bill — but rather that polling on individual components of the bill shows there is ample room for opponents to go on the attack.
Corporate tax breaks, impacts on older Americans, and increases in the cost for individuals to get health insurance coverage are just a few elements of the AHCA that Alaska voters overwhelmingly oppose.
As bad as these numbers might seem for the AHCA, it’s worth pointing out this poll was conducted before the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) shocked even many Congressional Republicans earlier this week with its review of the bill, which shows 14 million more Americans would be uninsured in the first year. That number would then rise to 24 million within a decade.
These numbers don’t show it, but it’s a pretty safe bet that this new information will only continue to build on negative views of the AHCA in the minds of Alaskans.
You can view the polling results in their entirety here.
The federal government should not be in the business of health care, period.
And why has Dan Sullivan failed to say anything about Trumpcare? It’s been a week.
And Lisa Murkowski seems to have fallen silent after her initial statement that she would oppose a bill that significantly impacted Medicaid programs in Alaska, or that defunded Planned Parenthood.
Watch this clip for how several Senators, including her, responded after the CBO scored the legislation and found that 24 million Americans would eventually lose their medical insurance.
http://www.snappytv.com/tc/4192599