For Many Americans, Opposition To ObamaCare Has Become Personal

ObamaCare is celebrating its fifth anniversary, but few Americas are cheering.

The Real Clear Politics average of the latest major opinion polls about the health law shows that 52.5% oppose it and only 42% approve.  The 10.5% spread is identical to the average of polls taken when the law was signed five years ago.  Approval numbers never have topped disapproval numbers since the law was enacted. It is not getting more popular and it is not settled law, as President Obama claims.

President Obama is touting the increased number of people who have health insurance as a result of the law.  According to Gallup, the uninsured rate among U.S. adults averaged 12.9% in the fourth quarter of last year. The uninsured rate was 14.4% the year before the health law passed, also according to Gallup.

So our health sector has been thrown into turmoil, millions of people have lost their private health plans, $1 trillion in new and higher taxes have been imposed on individuals and businesses – and the uninsured rate has dropped a net of 1.5%.

The majority of the newly-insured are enrolled in Medicaid, the joint federal-state health program that generally pays doctors and hospitals less than any other health plan.  Adding millions more able-bodied adults to Medicaid makes it even harder for the poorest, most vulnerable Americans to find a physician to see them. We can do better than this.

In focus group meetings we have organized and observed, it is clear why the law continues to be so unpopular.  Most wanted to cover the uninsured, but the law’s huge overreach means they are feeling for themselves the law’s impact.  ObamaCare has become personal.

Family health insurance premiums increased by more than $3,000, and did not decrease by $2,500, as President Obama promised they would by 2012.  And this year, the average individual deductible for an Obamacare bronze plan is $5,081 a year – 42% higher than the average deductible of $3,589 for a comparable individually-purchased plan.

People have lost the doctors and health plans they valued, many are being forced to pay penalties for not buying ObamaCare’s expensive mandated insurance, others are finding they must pay back subsidies they received last year, and compliance is a bureaucratic nightmare for individuals, small businesses, and physicians.

Many workers have lost jobs and hours because businesses couldn’t afford to provide ObamaCare’s expensive benefits or pay thousands of dollars in penalties.

But the requirements on companies nonetheless persist:  They are required to track the number of hours worked by each of their employees to determine whether they hit the magic 30-hour-a-week threshold that the law defines as a full-time job. Companies can be penalized if they don’t offer affordable insurance to full-time employees.

Businesses also are required to track and report the months an employee is covered by insurance and the cost of premiums so the government can decide if the coverage is affordable under the law.  Not one minute of these compliance costs adds to the value of the company or helps it grow or improve its products or services.

As much damage as the law is doing, it could be worse.  The law that passed five years ago is not the one that is being implemented today.

ObamaCare has been changed at least 49 times since it was enacted March 23, 2010.  The Obama administration has made 30 major changes, many without statutory authority.  In addition, Congress has passed and the president has signed an additional 17 changes, and the Supreme Court made two major modifications to the law, according to our count at the Galen Institute.

Had so many provisions of the law not been repealed, delayed, or defunded, it surely would be even more unpopular than it already is.  Since the law passed, the employer and individual mandates have been delayed, countless waivers and exemptions have been granted to favored groups, the 1099 reporting requirement on small businesses was repealed, the long-term care CLASS act was axed, funding was shut off for the troubled non-profit co-ops, and the Supreme Court changed the Medicaid expansion mandate into an option and transformed the individual mandate into an optional tax.

The Supreme Court will issue another verdict on the health law by the end of June, deciding whether the IRS acted illegally in allowing tax subsidies to flow through federally-facilitated health insurance exchanges.

While supporters of the law are predicting calamity if the court upholds the rule of law and declares administrative agencies can’t rewrite legislation, the impact will be manageable. Congress has pledged to quickly take action to make sure the five to six million people currently getting subsidies in the federal exchange can keep their coverage.

That will provide an opportunity for a fresh start – helping people keep their coverage but with a broader choice of policies while protecting as many as 50 million people in 37 states from the law’s onerous mandates.

A new survey commissioned by the Independent Women’s Forum found that an overwhelming majority of Americans want Congress to restore subsidies so people don’t lose their coverage, and a solid majority trusts the states, not Washington, to regulate health insurance markets.

Republican leaders in both houses of Congress say legislation they are formulating would give states the freedom to give their citizens more options of more affordable health insurance in more competitive markets.

Sens. Orrin Hatch (UT), Lamar Alexander (TN), and John Barrasso (WY) wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post describing their “plan to protect Americans harmed by the administration’s actions” and giving “states the freedom and flexibility to create better, more competitive health insurance markets offering more options and different choices.”

The chairmen of the three committees with jurisdiction over the issue in the House – Reps. Paul Ryan (WI), Fred Upton (MI), and John Kline (MN) – similarly wrote about their reform plans in The Wall Street Journal.  “What we will propose is an off-ramp out of ObamaCare toward patient-centered health care,” they write. “It has two parts: First, make insurance more affordable by ending Washington mandates and giving choice back to states, individuals and families. And second, support Americans in purchasing the coverage of their choosing.”

Finally, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin, who chairs the Republican Governors Association’s policy committee, wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Times, saying, “We understand that Congress is working on legislative solutions to provide other options to the states should the Court decide the IRS acted illegally in allowing health insurance subsidies in the federal exchanges. We are eager to have other options.”

The changes Congress makes post-King also would create an opportunity to show the free-market, consumer-friendly health reform plans that Republicans would offer should they win the White House in 2016.

That time can’t come too soon.