Public Supports Federal Subsidies Under Obamacare

The Republicans have been opposed to the Affordable Care Act since it's inception, and after it passed, they have voted more than 50 times to repeal those reforms. None of those repeal efforts ever made it out of Congress, and if they had they would have been vetoed by President Obama. None of those efforts ever had any chance of succeeding, but they kept the GOP's teabagger base happy.

But a few conservatives decided there was another chance to cripple Obamacare. They brought a case that is now being considered by the Supreme Court. They claim the law didn't allow federal subsidies to purchase insurance through the federal health care website -- but only allowed those subsidies through state insurance exchanges. This would stop the subsidies for more than 8 million Americans who got those subsidies through the federal exchange, and probably mean most of those people would lose their health insurance (since they couldn't afford it without the subsidy).

This has created a dilemma for congressional Republicans. If the court eliminates the subsidies through the federal exchange (and there's a 50-50 chance of that happening), then they would have 8 million angry people going into the next election. If they fix the law and allow those subsidies, then they will have an angry teabagger base going into the primaries. It has put them in the awkward position of hoping Obamacare wins its Supreme Court battle.

But it gets even worse for them. Not only will those 8 million (who lose their insurance) be unhappy, but a majority of all Americans (51%) will be unhappy (see above chart). That's the percentage who think the Republicans should fix the law to allow federal subsidies in all states, if the Supreme Court eliminates them.

I hope the Supreme Court upholds those subsidies -- but if it doesn't, it will be very interesting to see what the congressional Republicans do (since they control both House of Congress). Their unthinking opposition to Obamacare has now landed them between a rock and a hard place.

The charts above were made with information from a recent AP / GfK Poll -- done between April 23rd and 27th of a random national survey of 1,077 adults, with a margin of error of 3.4 points.