Most Voters Want Obamacare Kept/Expanded And The Subsidies Expanded

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between November 15th and 17th of a nationwide sample of 1,382 registered voters, with a 3.2 point margin of error.

About 74% Of Americans Want The ACA Subsidies Continued

 

The charts above are from the Kaiser Family Foundation Poll -- done between October 27th and November 2nd of a nationwide sample of 1,350 adults, with a 3 point margin of error.

72% Of Americans Agree With Democratic Position On ACA Subsidies

The chart above is from the Reuters / Ipsos Poll -- done between October 15th and 20th of a nationwide sample of 4,385 adults, with a 2 point margin of error.

 

The Government Shutdown Is About How Your Money Will Be Spent

What is this government shutdown about? Dan Rather and his team explain it:

The reports I’m seeing make all this government shutdown business seem so complicated. But it’s not, in its simplest and most direct terms. This fight boils down to one thing: your money.

Republicans want to use your money for tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and more border control agents — among other things. Democrats, seizing a rare political opportunity, are trying to claw some money back for millions of people who depend on health care coverage provided by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), also known as Obamacare.

This is not some penny ante political fight, but a battle over potentially very big increases in insurance premiums for tens of millions of people. . . .

The ACA provides subsidies to each state to defray the cost of health insurance. These subsidies were expanded and extended by President Joe Biden during the pandemic, but will expire at the end of 2025. Since 2021, the subsidy expansion has helped to cut premiums, causing enrollment to swell from 11 million people to 24 million.

If the subsidies aren’t extended permanently or even temporarily — something Republicans have so far objected to — health insurance premiums will increase by an average of 114%, and four million enrollees will be forced to opt out because they will no longer be able to afford it, according to the non-partisan health policy research group, Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).

The New York Times calculated that a 55-year-old couple making $85,000 a year would see their premiums triple to $24,535 annually. People living in red states will be disproportionately affected, with those in Texas being the most vulnerable. More than a million Texans will lose coverage, according to KFF.

Democrats would say Trump’s big beautiful bill is anything but, because it will push 7.8 million Americans off of Medicaid, according to the Congressional Budget Office. They might have gone to the ACA marketplace to find affordable insurance, but it will no longer be affordable if the subsidies are gone. . . .

So, while it may feel like déjà vu all over again, this government shutdown is different — far different even from the other three Trump presided over, because the outcome could mean the reversal of a trend that has meant more Americans are insured than ever before. . . .

With the 2026 midterms coming up, Democrats are holding the Republicans’ feet to the political fire, with a reasonable hope of success. It is risky to allow millions to lose health insurance and force millions more to swallow a significant premium increase to keep it, months before one of the most important congressional elections in U.S. history — especially if the Republicans can’t convincingly point fingers at the Democrats. . . .

As with everything in Trump’s orbit, normal rules do not apply. What has worked with previous shutdowns may not move the needle this time. But for the first time since January 20, Democrats have a chance to get something they want, which also happens to be something most Americans also want.

Public Blames Trump/GOP For Shutdown - Agrees With Dems On ACA Subsidies

 

The charts above reflect the results of the Washington Post Poll -- done on October 1st of a random nationwide sample of 1,010 adults, with a 3.5 point margin of error.

Strong Plurality Supports Terminating Musk's Government Subsidies And Contracts

 

The chart above reflects the results of the Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between June 6th and 9th of a nationwide sample of 1,533 adults (including 1,397 registered voters). The margin of error is 3.5 points for adults and 3.2 points for registered voters.

Public Opposes Trump's Elimination Of Insurance Subsidies

Donald Trump was unable to get any of his odious and onerous versions of Trumpcare through Congress, but that doesn't mean he's not still trying to destroy Obamacare. He recently issued an executive order that would stop any subsidy payments to insurance companies for helping working and middle class families to purchase health insurance.

His move will cause many Americans to lose their health insurance, and cause premiums to skyrocket for millions more. Trump doesn't care. He's determined to destroy everything that President Obama accomplished, and it doesn't matter to him how many Americans he hurts while doing it.

But he has once again shot himself in the foot with his action. The American people, by a 22 point margin, oppose his elimination of the insurance subsidies. And by a 31 point margin, they want Congress to restore those subsidies.

The public would like to see the costs of insurance (and medical care) to be brought under control, but they know that eliminating the insurance subsidies won't do that. It will just make things worse for millions of Americans.

The charts above reflect the results in a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done on October 15th and 16th of a random national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,326 registered voters), with a margin of error of 3.1 points.

Will Trump Try To Destroy Obamacare By Stopping The Funding Of Subsidies To Help Workers Buy Insurance ?

After the "repeal and replace" of Obamacare was defeated in the Senate (because enough GOP votes couldn't be found to take insurance away from millions of Americans), Donald Trump said he would now just allow Obamacare to "implode". But even he knows that Obamacare, while it has some problems, is not anywhere near imploding.

That's why he is now threatening to give that implosion some help. He is threatening to stop the funding for subsidies that help lower-income workers buy health insurance -- insurance they could not afford without the government subsidies. Cutting those subsidies off would seriously damage Obamacare -- making it unworkable, and causing millions of hard-working Americans to lose their health insurance.

Trump is a narcissist who hates losing -- and he is upset over failing to repeal and replace Obamacare. It is definitely a possibility that he would harm Americans in this way. But the crazy part is that (as the map above from Axios shows) the states that support Trump and Republicans the most (the reddest states) would be the states affected the most by stopping the funding for the subsidies. In the chart above, the states with the highest percentage of people getting those cost-sharing subsidies are those in the darker colors.

That means Trump would be cutting off his nose to spite his face. Would the Republicans in Congress let him do that? If they did, it could be tantamount to handing control of Congress to the Democrats in the 2018 election.

Trump Threatens Dems With Stopping Insurance Subsidies

Donald Trump promised voters that he could make changes in Washington because he was a great businessman who knew how to negotiate with others. But he has shown no ability to actually negotiate any kind of deal since taking office.

He called meetings with his fellow Republicans at the White House to hammer out a deal to repeal and replace Obamacare -- and failed miserably. He wound up threatening members of the GOP's "freedom caucus" with opposing them in the next election -- a threat that most just laughed at, since those House members are in very safe districts.

He has now changed his target, but not his "negotiating" tactic. He's still using threats, but now his target is congressional Democrats. He says if the Democrats don't cooperate in his effort to destroy Obamacare, he will stop the payment of insurance subsidies -- the subsidies that help millions of American families to buy health insurance.

Here is the essence of his threat -- Democrats either help him destroy Obamacare, or he will destroy it by himself (and try to blame them). He needs to work on his threats. No self-respecting Democrat would choose option 1. It's far better, if Obamacare has to be destroyed, that Trump do it himself -- and take the blame for it in the 2018 election (along with his Republican supporters).

He may think he can shift blame for stopping subsidies to the Democrats, but the public is not going to buy that. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation Poll shows that 61% of the general population says whatever happens to Obamacare is the responsibility of Republicans (since they control both houses of Congress and the White House). The public knows who has the governmental power and who doesn't.

And there's something else that should worry Trump and the congressional Republicans. The American public strongly supports continuing the subsidies that help families (making between $22k and $44k) to buy health insurance (see chart above). About 68% of the general public supports keeping those subsidies, while only 13% oppose them. And that includes a huge majority of the Republican base (with 62% supporting the subsidies and only 20% opposing them).

The chart was made from information in a recent Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between April 2nd and 4th of a random national sample of 1,500 adults (including 1,331 registered voters), with a margin of error of 3.2 points.

And it's not just the public that opposes cutting off the subsidy payments. Health insurance providers have joined with hospitals and doctors and the traditionally very conservative U.S. Chamber of Commerce to send Trump a letter asking him to NOT cut off the subsidy payments. That letter is shown below.

If Trump does try to cut off those subsidy payments, he will just be hastening the destruction of his own presidency (and maybe even the Republican majorities in Congress).

It's A Rocky Road Ahead For "Repeal And Replace"

The Republican's plan to replace Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) has only been revealed for a couple of days now, and it looks like it is already in trouble. To pass it, the Republicans would have to stick together to overcome unanimous Democratic opposition -- but that looks unlikely.

The "Freedom Caucus" (the teabagger Republicans in the Congress) are upset over the bill because it still contains some subsidies to help offset the cost of insurance (although those subsidies are smaller for the working class families -- who need them the most). These nuts just want Obamacare repealed, and don't care that doing that would take health insurance away from 20 million or more people. For them ideology is more important that the lives of Americans.

The odds are they will vote against the plan, and if they do, the plan might not be able to be approved in either the House or the Senate. Some might think these teabagger congress-critters would eventually cave and vote for the GOP plan, but I'm not so sure. The right-wing press (Breitbart News, etc.) have almost unanimously come out against the plan, and with encouragement from them, the teabaggers could well stick to their opposition.

And that would be fine with a majority of Americans. Most Americans agree with the Democrats on this issue, in that they don't want to see Obamacare repealed. As the top chart shows, about 56% of the public wants Obamacare saved (with 51% saying it should be kept and improved). Only 39% want it repealed (with 31% wanting it repealed and replaced).

And it gets worse for the Republicans. The two aspects they hate the most about Obamacare are the individual mandate to have insurance and the subsidies to help low/moderate income families to buy insurance. As the second and third charts above show, the public now favors both of those aspects of Obamacare -- with 84% supporting providing the subsidies, and 53% supporting the individual mandate.

It's turning out to be tougher to repeal Obamacare than the Republicans thought it would be -- and I'm beginning to think they might not be able to do it.

These charts were made from info in a new Monmouth University Poll -- done between March 2nd and 5th of a random national sample of 801 adults, with a 3.5 point margin of error.

More Than 1/3 Don't Know Obamacare & A.C.A. Are Same

A couple of weeks ago, I read on social media where a trumpista was bragging that he would not lose his insurance if Obamacare was repealed, because he got that insurance through the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and not through Obamacare. I laughed at that, thinking that surely people could not be that stupid. Surely people understood that Obamacare was simply a popular nickname for the Affordable Care Act. I was wrong.

A recent poll shows that more than a third of the American public is really that stupid -- either believing that the two were different (17%) or didn't know if they were different or not (18%). That's 35%, more than one out of three people, that don't know Obamacare and the ACA are the same thing. And the number was even larger for those making less than $50,000 a year (the very people most helped by Obamacare).

And it gets worse. The same poll showed that only 61% understood that repealing Obamacare would result in a loss of subsidies or Medicaid for many people -- meaning that 39% thought it wouldn't or didn't know if it would or not.

This helps to explain how so many working people could vote for Trump, even though he was promising to repeal Obamacare (i.e., take their insurance away from them). They knew that the ACA had helped them get insurance, but after listening to Republicans, believed that Obamacare was some evil thing that they were not a part of.

The Morning Consult Poll was done on January 25th and 26th of a random national sample of 1,890 adults, and has a margin of error of 2 points.

The charts below, showing how much the uninsured population has been reduced by Obamacare in each state, is from the Gallup Poll. It was done between January 2nd and December 30th of 2016 of a random national sample of 177,192 adults. The margin of error for each state is between 1 and 3.5 points (depending on the sample size in the state).

Public Supports Insurance Subsidies (& A Public Option)

The Republicans in Congress are quickly acting to repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), or at least defund it (which would effectively kill it). They have been lying about the program since it was passed, but what they still fail to realize is that most Americans don't want the program repealed. People understand that the program is not perfect, and most just want it fixed -- not repealed.

One aspect of Obamacare that Republican officials dislike the most is the providing of subsidies to help Americans buy health insurance. Once Obamacare is defunded, or repealed, this aspect would disappear -- and over 20 million Americans would lose the health insurance they have been able to get under Obamacare.

But the public does not want the subsidies to disappear. As the chart above shows, most Americans are in favor of providing government subsidies to help low income (and middle class) people buy the health insurance they need. Only a tiny minority opposes these subsidies.

And a majority of the public also supports something else that congressional Republicans oppose -- a public option for insurance to compete with private insurance (see chart below).

The Republicans are playing with fire in their efforts to repeal Obamacare, and they may find they will get burned.

These charts were made from information contained in a new Economist / YouGov Poll -- done between January 7th and 10th of a random national sample of 1,424 adults (including 1,237 registered voters), and has a margin of error of 3.1 points.

Public Supports Court Decisions On Obamacare & Marriage

Last Thursday, the Supreme Court upheld the giving of subsidies to buy health insurance in all 50 states, and on Friday, that court then legalized same-sex marriage in all 50 state. Since then, right-wing Republican officials have been loudly complaining and whining. To hear some of them, you would think the end of the world is upon us.

But the truth is that they are only speaking for a small minority of Americans -- the teabaggers and evangelicals within their own party's base (which is understandable since those are the people they need to keep happy to survive their party's primaries next year). It turns out that fairly substantial majorities of the public at large disagree with the Republicans. About 63% of Americans support the Supreme Court decision to keep the insurance subsidies, and 59% support the decision to legalize same-sex marriages.

Those are some fairly large percentages, and show that the position taken by right-wing Republicans might be popular with their own base, but are not going to be winning positions to take in next year's general election.

The numbers are from a new CNN / ORC Poll -- taken between June 26th and 28th of 1,017 nationwide adults (with a 3 point margin of error).

Krugman: GOP Nightmare Comes True (Obamacare Works)

Last week, the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) dodged a big bullet in the Supreme Court. Many had thought the court would declare subsidies could not be given through the federal exchange, but only through state insurance exchanges. That could have been disastrous, since nearly half the states did not create a health insurance exchange of their own.

If that had happened, somewhere between 6 and 8.5 million people would have lost their insurance. That's because they would no longer be able to afford it without a subsidy. It would have required Congress to "fix" the law -- and the Republicans, who control both houses of Congress, have shown no ability or desire to do that.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court backed Obamacare and kept the subsidies in place. So, with Obamacare in place for the long-haul now, the question arises -- how is the program working?

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman (caricatured above by DonkeyHotey) answers that question in his column in the New York Times. Here's what he had to say:

 The Affordable Care Act is now in its second year of full operation; how’s it doing?

The answer is, better than even many supporters realize.

Start with the act’s most basic purpose, to cover the previously uninsured. Opponents of the law insisted that it would actually reduce coverage; in reality, around 15 million Americans have gained insurance.

But isn’t that a very partial success, with millions still uncovered? Well, many of those still uninsured are in that position because their state governments have refused to let the federal government enroll them in Medicaid.

Beyond that, you need to realize that the law was never intended or expected to cover everyone. Undocumented immigrants aren’t eligible, and any system that doesn’t enroll people automatically will see some of the population fall through the cracks. Massachusetts has had guaranteed health coverage for almost a decade, but 5 percent of its nonelderly adult population remains uninsured.

Suppose we use 5 percent uninsured as a benchmark. How much progress have we made toward getting there? In states that have implemented the act in full and expanded Medicaid, data from the Urban Institute show the uninsured falling from more than 16 percent to just 7.5 percent — that is, in year two we’re already around 80 percent of the way there. Most of the way with the A.C.A.!

But how good is that coverage? Cheaper plans under the law do have relatively large deductibles and impose significant out-of-pocket costs. Still, the plans are vastly better than no coverage at all, or the bare-bones plans that the act made illegal. The newly insured have seen a sharp drop in health-related financial distress, and report a high degree of satisfaction with their coverage.

What about costs? In 2013 there were dire warnings about a looming “rate shock”; instead, premiums came in well below expectations. In 2014 the usual suspects declared that huge premium increases were looming for 2015; the actual rise was just 2 percent. There was another flurry of scare stories about rate hikes earlier this year, but as more information comes in it looks as if premium increases for 2016 will be bigger than for this year but still modest by historical standards — which means that premiums remain much lower than expected.

And there has also been a sharp slowdown in the growth of overall health spending, which is probably due in part to the cost-control measures, largely aimed at Medicare, that were also an important part of health reform.

What about economic side effects? One of the many, many Republican votes against Obamacare involved passing something called the Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act, and opponents have consistently warned that helping Americans afford health care would lead to economic doom. But there’s no job-killing in the data: The U.S. economy has added more than 240,000 jobs a month on average since Obamacare went into effect, its biggest gains since the 1990s.

Finally, what about claims that health reform would cause the budget deficit to explode? In reality, the deficit has continued to decline, and the Congressional Budget Office recently reaffirmed its conclusionthat repealing Obamacare would increase, not reduce, the deficit.

Put all these things together, and what you have is a portrait of policy triumph — a law that, despite everything its opponents have done to undermine it, is achieving its goals, costing less than expected, and making the lives of millions of Americans better and more secure.

Now, you might wonder why a law that works so well and does so much good is the object of so much political venom — venom that is, by the way, on full display in Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissenting opinion, with its rants against “interpretive jiggery-pokery.” But what conservatives have always feared about health reform is the possibility that it might succeed, and in so doing remind voters that sometimes government action can improve ordinary Americans’ lives.

That’s why the right went all out to destroy the Clinton health plan in 1993, and tried to do the same to the Affordable Care Act. But Obamacare has survived, it’s here, and it’s working. The great conservative nightmare has come true. And it’s a beautiful thing.

Obamacare Wins And Republicans Dodge A Bullet

I don't think anyone expected Obamacare to win the Supreme Court decision by the margin it did. Most thought it would be a 5 to 4 decision regardless of which way it went, but it wasn't. The court voted 6 to 3 (with Kennedy and Roberts joining liberals Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan, and Sotomayor) to uphold the giving of government subsidies in all states instead of just the states with a state insurance exchange. The court, in an opinion written by Roberts, said it was obvious that Congress meant to give the subsidies to people in all states.

And after the court decision, congressional Republicans and GOP presidential candidates were quick to condemn the decision as terrible and claim they would resume their effort to repeal the ACA (Obamacare). They haven't been saying much lately, because they were afraid they might actually win this court case -- and have to go into the next election after taking health insurance away from as many as 8,5 million people.

But they dodged that bullet, so they can now resume the political theater aimed at their base teabaggers -- secure in the knowledge that they can't possibly succeed (and get in the same kind of electoral trouble winning the court case would have caused). I can't believe any but the stupidest of them actually want to repeal Obamacare. Winning the court case would have taken insurance away from 8.5 million people, while repealing Obamacare would take health insurance away from around 19 million people. They say they would replace Obamacare with something of their own, a better plan -- but not a single Republican has come up with a plan so far.

This court case was a good thing, because it once again stamped the program as legal and constitutional. Now maybe we can get bust fixing Obamacare -- because while it was a big improvement over what we had before, it is far from perfect.

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A new CBS News / New York Times Poll shows the court ruled the way most Americans wanted them to rule. About 70% of poll respondents said they wanted the court to allow subsidies in all states. And for the first time since that poll has been taken, more people approve of Obamacare than disapprove. People are starting to realize that, while Obamacare is not perfect, it is better -- and most want it improved, not repealed.

Supreme Court Should Protect Obamacare Subsidies

When our lawmakers wrote the bill that instituted Obamacare (the Affordable Heath Care Act), they put a provision in it to make sure that it was understood that those people going through a state health care exchange qualified for a federal government subsidy to help them purchase insurance. But they evidently didn't make it clear enough that people using either a state exchange or the federal exchange qualified for those subsidies.

The right-wing, which has been searching for a way to destroy Obamacare for several years now, has jumped on this rather poorly written provision of the law -- and they filed suit to keep those using the federal exchange from getting a subsidy. That case is now pending before the U.S. Supreme Court, and if that court decides in favor of the right-wingers who brought the case, up to 8 million people would lose their subsidy (and no longer be able to afford health care insurance).

A new poll has been done, the Washington Post / ABC News Poll, to find out what the public thinks the Supreme Court should do. That survey was done between May 28th and 31st of a random national sample of 1,001 adults, and has a margin of error of 3.5 points. And the public spoke up clearly in defense of the Obamacare subsidies.

The public wants those subsidies to remain intact. This includes 55% of all adults, 65% of Democrats, 57% of Independents, 58% of those living in a state that has a state exchange, and 53% of those living in a state without an exchange. The only group with a majority saying the subsidies should be stopped is Republicans (and 34% of them want the subsidies protected).

Republican officials are beginning to realize they may have shot themselves in the foot on this issue. They could be entering the next election cycle being responsible for something the public is against (the removal of subsidies, which could virtually kill Obamacare), and with 8 million angry voters having lost their health insurance (and looking for someone to blame).

The Supreme Court decision is expected sometime this month, and most pundits believe there is a 50-50 chance they will stop the federal subsidies. The congressional Republicans have been searching for a way out of this mess they created for themselves (with their rabid opposition to Obamacare), but right now, it looks like they are not going to be able to agree on a solution. They are too afraid of looking like they support Obamacare (which could hurt them in next year's primary).

It looks like the states will have to find their own solution -- and fortunately a simple one is available. They could follow the example of Pennsylvania and Delaware. Those two states are creating their own exchange -- sort of. It is a state exchange in name only, since their citizens will continue to use the federal website to buy insurance -- but it would be sufficient to allow their citizens to keep getting the federal subsidy to help them purchase insurance.

Will all the non-exchange states follow this example if the Court rules against the subsidies? I don't know. Some very red states, like Texas, could refuse to take action. It will be interesting to see what the court decides this month, and what Republicans do about that decision (if it kills subsidies). They have definitely put themselves between a rock and a hard place on this issue.

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.

Majority Of Public Wants Insurance Subsidies Continued

Republicans have been pitching a hissy fit about the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) since it was passed, and their incessant whining has convinced a lot of Americans that there must be something wrong with the health care reform. But despite their repeated attempts, the GOP has been unable to stop Obamacare. They have tried to repeal it over 50 times, but that is just political theater -- played out for the benefit of their base. Everyone knows that even if such a repeal could get through Congress (which Democratic senators would never allow), the president would just veto it.

But a few devious right-wingers came up with another plan -- use a poorly-worded section of the reform law to outlaw giving subsidies to those who bought their insurance through the federal exchange instead of a state exchange. And their case (King vs. Burwell) is now being heard in the U.S. Supreme Court -- and has about a 50-50 chance of being won, which would mean that at least 8 million people could lose their insurance (since they couldn't afford it without the subsidy).

Extremists in the GOP are celebrating this possibility, because they care more about ideology (and hating the president) than they do about citizens receiving proper health care. Smarter Republicans are beginning to worry though. They know that this one case could do more damage to their party than anything else they have done.

Eight million people, angry at the party that took their health insurance, is certainly not going to help in the next election. But a recent poll shows the damage could be even worse than that. About 71% (more than seven out of every ten Americans) want the subsidies to continue in every state -- not just the ones with a state exchange (see chart above). Many of these people may be unhappy about Obamacare in general, but they like most aspects of the law -- and one of those aspects they like (and want to see continued) is the federal subsidies to help people buy health insurance.

It the right-wingers win the court case, it's going to intensify the war within the Republican Party. They will have to decide whether to celebrate their hate, or fix the law to allow the subsidies to continue -- and that will be a huge battle, which will affect the 2016 election. I don't know how that battle would come out. I just hope the court doesn't destroy Obamacare.

The chart was made from the results of a new Hart Research Associates Poll (done for the SEIU). That survey was done between February 18th and 22nd of a random national sample of 800 likely 2016 voters,  and has a margin of error of 3.5 points.

Could Roberts Be The Swing Vote That Saves Obamacare ?

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the constitutionality of the government subsidies that help many people buy health insurance on Wednesday (King vs. Burwell). If the subsidies (those given thru the federal insurance exchange) are ruled unconstitutional, it means as many as 8 million Americans could lose their health insurance (because without the subsidies they could no longer afford that insurance). The question now is whether the court will vote the subsidies are constitutional or not.

If we go by what party the justices belonged to when appointed, the chances are good that the subsidies would be declared unconstitutional -- because we have five Republicans and four Democrats on the court. But while that is the best predictor of how justices will vote, it does not always work out that way.

Take for instance, Chief Justice Roberts. Although a Republican, Roberts was the swing vote in the original Obamacare case, and joined the Democrats in a 5-4 vote declaring Obamacare was constitutional. Could he do the same thing again?

Think Progress thinks that could happen. At least it has a 50-50 chance of happening (see the chart above). They looked at the past votes of all the justices, and came up with odds on how each justice is likely to vote in King vs. Burwell. They believe that four justices (Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan) have 99% odds of voting to uphold the subsidies, while four justices (Scalia, Alito, Kennedy, and Thomas) have odds ranging from 0% to 15% that they will vote against the subsidies. That leaves Roberts, who has a 50% chance of voting either way.

In other words, it's nail-biting time for the millions who would lose their health insurance.

If you would like to know more about just what this case is about, Steven Brill has written an excellent article on it for Reuters. Here is some of what he had to say:

Congressional intent will be hotly debated in the U.S. Supreme Court this Wednesday in King v. Burwell, the latest litigation vehicle being deployed by opponents of Obamacare. “Congress could not have chosen clearer language to express its intent to limit subsidies to state exchanges,” the plaintiffs, represented by the Competitive Enterprise Institute, argue in their brief.

That is fiction. Provable fiction.

Congress knew exactly what it wanted to do when it passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, and contrary to the plaintiffs’ claim, that included wanting subsidies for buying health insurance on the Obamacare exchanges to be available to all citizens, even those residing in the 36 states that did not set up their own exchanges, instead relying on the exchange set up by the federal government.

I’m a reporter. I hate to take sides. And I certainly didn’t in what has been widely reviewed as my even-handed treatment of the merits and demerits of Obamacare in my recently published book about the broken American healthcare system and how Obamacare was conceived and implemented to fix it. But this is one of those issues where reporters err if they write an “on the one hand, on the other hand” story that creates patently false equivalency.

As I wrote in a November column for Reuters, soon after the Supreme Court’s surprising decision to take this case, disputes that end up at the court are usually about the interpretation of the Constitution and statutes, not about facts. The press is mostly left to provide the basic background of the dispute and then explain the positions of the lawyers on each side. But at its core, this case, as with any about congressional intent, is about knowable facts, not about the lawyers’ views of the law.

King v. Burwell hinges on one poorly worded sentence cited by the plaintiffs in a 961-page law that seems to negate a linchpin of that law — the availability of those subsidies to middle-class families so they can buy health insurance. The question is whether that sentence should somehow outweigh all the other provisions in the law that contradict it. And when the meaning of a federal law ends up being disputed in court because the wording is vague or internally contradictory, the dispute turns on the kinds of facts journalists are used to digging out. That’s because judges are supposed to figure out what the legislators intended the law to mean and to do.

I know what the legislators intended because in researching my book, I interviewed pretty much everyone involved in the conception and writing of the law. Moreover, I did that long before King v. Burwell had become the Obamacare opponents’ favorite new weapon, which means that those opponents had no reason to spin the fairytale that Congress did not intend for those subsidies to go to the millions of Americans signing up on the federally run exchange. At the time, no one had a dog in a fight over congressional intent, because there was no fight.

I also reviewed reams of internal emails and memos generated by congressional staffers working for both Democrats and Republicans. In no document from start to finish, in a legislative process that spanned more than two years, is there even a hint of anything but the unambiguous assumption that the law, whose first section is titled “Quality, Affordable Health Care for All Americans,” would indeed provide these insurance subsidies for all Americans who needed them.

In short, I had a catbird seat for doing exactly that kind of fact-based reporting that anyone judging a case like this — reporters, as well as judges — should do. But I didn’t appreciate it because neither I nor the people I was interviewing had any expectation that this case would become something the Supreme Court would take seriously.

Indeed, when I mentioned the case to several of those sources during the spring and summer of last year, all of them – Democrats and Republicans – did some version of an eye roll. This is why there is only scant mention of the case in my book, the draft of which was completed before the court took the case.

I’ve now gone back and looked at my notes and can report that I interviewed 21 congressional staffers and members last year in my effort to reconstruct the day-by-day narrative of how Obamacare happened. None ever mentioned the possibility that the subsidies did not apply to the states in the federal exchange.

On the contrary, everything they told me — and all of the contemporaneous emails and other internal documents I reviewed — assumed that the federal exchange would simply be a substitute for a state exchange if a state decided not to launch its own, and that the same rules would apply. That is consistent with the instructions Democratic and Republican staff members gave to the Congressional Budget Office when they asked it to “score” (estimate the cost of) various drafts of the law, including the final version.

What A Fine Mess The GOP Is Creating For Itself

When the GOP seized both houses of Congress in the last election, they were jubilant. They thought they would now be able to do whatever they wanted, and governing would not be a snap. The mess they've made by playing politics with the funding of Homeland Security shows they really weren't ready to govern. They were embarrassed before the entire nation, as it became apparent that their teabagger caucus isn't interested in doing the compromising that is necessary to govern -- but only in pursuing their own ideological purity to keep their base back home happy.

But the Homeland Security mess will look like chicken-feed up beside another mess that is brewing -- a mess that springs straight from their hatred of President Obama and his health reform plan. For years they were able to score points with their teabagger base by opposing Obamacare. That opposition didn't really hurt them much, because it was obvious that no matter how many times they voted to repeal Obamacare there was no way they could accomplish it.

But then a few Republicans got a not-so-bright idea. They would take Obamacare to court and get the Supreme Court to declare that the federal healthcare exchange could not give government subsidies to help people buy insurance (because of some poor wording in the Affordable Care Act). They reasoned that if the 34 states without a health care exchange could not receive subsidies, then Obamacare would fall -- and they are right, because those subsidies are the heart of the program.

Now it looks like they have a 50-50 chance of winning that court case (King vs. Burwell), and that is starting to scare the hell out of a lot of Republicans -- the ones smart enough to know that could seriously damage their party. It turns out that there are at least 8 million people who have gotten health insurance through the federal exchange with a government subsidy. Those people will most likely lose their health insurance if the GOP wins that court case, because they can only afford that insurance with a government subsidy.

That's a lot of angry people -- and angry people vote against the people who made them angry. And a lot of those people live in swing states -- states the GOP must win to have a chance at the White House in 2016. It would affect more than 1,000,000 people in Florida, nearly 200,000 in Ohio, over 400,000 in North Carolina, about 400,000 in Pennsylvania, nearly 300,000 in Michigan, about 400,000 in Georgia, etc.

And those numbers were just the people who had signed up through January 30th. A lot more people signed up in February, March, and April.

This gives the Republicans a tough choice. They protect the insurance those millions of people currently have by either creating state exchanges in the 34 states (or by fixing the federal law to allow the subsidies -- which would anger their teabagger base (and possibly cost them dearly in the 2016 primaries). Or they can stand firm and watch those angry people who lost their insurance vote against them in the 2016 general election.

In short, they have created a situation for themselves where they only have bad options. And it was caused by their unreasonable hatred for the president -- a hatred that had blinded them to the realities happening in the health care reform. What are they to do?

I doubt they can fix the law at the federal level. The bumbling mess they have made of Homeland Security funding shows they are incapable of governing on that level. That means it will be left up to the separate states, and that's not much better. A few states are considering creating their own exchange to allow their citizens to get the federal subsidies, but most (like Texas, which has over 900,000 who will lose their insurance) are doing nothing -- at least so far.

This reminds me of the old saying -- Be careful what you wish for, because you might get it. The Republicans wished for the downfall of Obamacare, and now they might have to deal with the consequences -- consequences that could be devastating for their party.