The Public Says NO To Replacing Obamacare

Donald Trump has instructed his Justice Department to intervene on the side of the GOP-controlled states who are in court trying to abolish Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act). Those states have won a judgement from a Texas judge that ruled Obamacare unconstitutional, and the case is now pending before an appeals court -- and will likely wind up being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Trump said he will be known after Obamacare is overturned as the "health care president". He says that's because it will be replaced by something better. There's only one problem with that -- he doesn't have a better plan (or any plan at all), and neither do the congressional Republicans. They have tried for nine years to come up with a plan, and they have failed. They can't even get the members of their own party to agree on a plan, and none of the plans they have proposed would cover all Americans or control medical costs.

The American people know that. They know that abolishing Obamacare would be a disaster, because the GOP has no plan. They also know that abolishing it would not be an improvement. It would just rob millions of Americans of the heal insurance they currently have.

As the chart above shows, only 35% of adults want to replace Obamacare with some nonexistent Republican plan, while 55% say they want to keep Obamacare and improve it.

The Democrats are floating a plan to replace Obamacare. They want to replace it with a single-payer system (like Medicare For All). That is more popular than what Trump wants to do, but not popular enough. As the chart below shows, the public is split on whether that is a good idea. About 43% say it's a good idea while 45% say it is not. That 2 point margin is within the poll's margin of error.

There is a change that would appeal to a majority of Americans though. It is illustrated in the bottom chart. About 51% say they want to keep Obamacare but also allow adults to buy into Medicare instead of purchasing private insurance. That may be the way to go for now. It will let the public get used to a public health insurance plan, and make it easier in the future to extend that plan to all Americans.

All of these charts reflect the results of a recent Quinnipiac University Poll -- done between March 21st and 25th of 1,358 voters nationwide, with a margin of error of 3.3 points.