Obamacare gains momentum: More than half of Americans approve of Affordable Care Act, poll finds

Fifty-five percent of respondents approve of the ACA — a 17-percent increase from November

Published April 4, 2017 10:10PM (EDT)

 (Getty/Don Emmert)
(Getty/Don Emmert)

You don’t know what you have until it’s gone — or in the case of Obamacare, almost gone.

More than half of Americans approve of the Affordable Care Act, a Gallup poll released Tuesday reveals. This is the first time ACA approval has been this high since Gallup began polling in 2012.

Fifty-five percent of respondents approve of the ACA — a 17-percent increase from November. Forty percent are in favor of keeping the law if significant changes are made, while 30 percent want it repealed entirely. Still, only 26 percent of those surveyed want the law to remain intact as is.

Despite growing ACA support from Democrats (86 percent), Republicans are still slow to embrace the law with a 17-percent approval rating.

President Obama’s signature health care law has always been a point of contention in Washington, but even more so recently. Throughout his campaign, President Donald Trump vowed to quickly repeal and replace Obamacare once he was in office with “something terrific.”

The long-awaited result, the American Health Care Act, was dead on arrival. After his big replacement plan failed, House Speaker Paul Ryan was forced to reckon with the fact that finding a solution would be harder than he thought.

“We’re going to be living with Obamacare for the foreseeable future,” Ryan said. The American public now seems fine with that, as ACA approval has risen almost 20 percent in the past five months.

The AHCA’s defeat was a blow to the Trump administration, which announced it would instead focus on tax reform. Even passing tax-related legislation will prove challenging though; today, House Democrats told Trump to release his tax returns before they consider his tax reform plan.

It’s clear that Trump wants Obamacare to go, but less and less people are agreeing with him. Maybe he’ll have better luck with his new tax proposal, although it now seems unlikely.


By Tatiana Baez

Tatiana Baez is mostly Salon's social media coordinator, but she also writes here and elsewhere. She lives in Brooklyn and tweets.

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