A new poll finds 75 percent of Americans say they want the Obamacare law that prompts abortion-funding and rationing concerns changed.
The question they differ on is how that change should take place — by repealing the bill, de-funding it, or modifying it in other ways to ferret out some of the problems and lessen the damage it could cause the country.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 75% of likely voters want to change the law, while only 18% want it left alone. Those figures include 20% who want the law repealed and nothing done to replace it, 28% who want it repealed and then have its most popular provisions put into a new law and 27% who say leave the law in place but get rid of the unpopular provisions.
“It is worth noting that a majority (55%) take one of the middle ground approaches—repeal and replace or leave it and improve,” pollster Scott Rasmussen notes. “Overall, 48% take an approach that starts with repeal.”
Rasmussen suggests that if House Republicans could put forward more ideas on changes they would implement after repeal that support for repealing the law would grow.
“It is likely that some people who prefer repeal when there are no other options for change are drawn to the idea of leaving the law in place and removing the unpopular provisions,” he said. “Voters overwhelmingly want to see last year’s health care law changed, but there is substantial disagreement about how best to do it.”
The survey found most Republicans and unaffiliated voters prefer to start with repeal. Most Democrats prefer to start by leaving the law in place.
“Republicans are fairly evenly divided between repealing the law and doing nothing or repealing the law and putting its popular provisions into a new law. Democrats are fairly evenly divided between leaving the law alone or starting with the existing law and removing the unpopular provisions,” Rasmussen notes.
After postponing the vote scheduled for Wednesday because of the shooting in Arizona involving Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, House Republicans have re-scheduled the vote for next week.
Speaker John Boehner quickly postponed the vote hours after the tragic shooting that resulted in the slaying of a half dozen people and injuring more than a dozen more. Giffords is still recovering from the gunshot wound to the head she received from 22-year-old suspect Jared Lee Loughner, who waited in line to approach Giffords and shot her in the head from about two feet away.
Loughner appears to be a mentally unstable individual who had no political-related motivations for shooting the congresswoman.
Following the shooting, Boehner swiftly issued a response, saying, “An attack on one who serves is an attack on all who serve” and postponing the vote.
In the aftermath of the shootings, some Democrats called on Boehner and Republicans to not go forward with the repeal vote. But, given the significant opposition from the American public and the way in which the health care takeover affects pro-life issues such as abortion and rationing, most Republican lawmakers see the vote as necessary. However, the debate leading up to the vote may be more subdued than it would have been had the Arizona shooting not occurred.
The House of Representatives took its first step last week in repealing the abortion-funding ObamaCare bill that pro-life groups strongly oppose.
On a 236-181 vote, Republicans approved the rules for debate for the legislation they will vote on next week to repeal the government takeover of health care. Four Democrats (Reps. Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Mike McIntyre and Larry Kissell of North Carolina and Mike Ross of Arkansas) joined Republicans in supporting the rule while two Republicans voted present and 15 lawmakers of both parties did not vote.
The vote also paves the way for axing the abortion funding from ObamaCare.
The rule also provides for consideration of H. Res. 9, which instructs relevant House Committees to replace Obamacare with legislation that achieves certain goals including to “prohibit taxpayer funding for abortions and provide conscience protections for health care providers.”
Members of Congress are also scheduled to vote soon on a bill sponsored by pro-life Congressman Mike pence that would revoke federal taxpayer funding for the Planned Parenthood abortion business.
The Title X Abortion Provider Prohibition Act ensures that taxpayer money authorized by the federal government for family planning efforts supposedly to reduce abortions don’t go to the nation’s biggest abortion business.
Last year alone, according to Planned Parenthood’s own annual report, it received more than $363 million in revenue from government grants and contracts. During that same timeframe, it did 324,008 abortions, a 5.8 percent increase from the previous year, which also set a record high at that time.
“It is morally wrong to end an unborn human life by abortion. It is also morally wrong to take the taxpayer dollars of millions of pro-life Americans and use them to promote abortion at home or abroad,” Pence said on the House floor in introducing his bill.
