The day before the House of Representatives is slated to vote for legislation to repeal the Obamacare health care law, new polling data shows Americans continue to support repeal, or at least scaling back the measure.
“Support for repeal of the national health care law passed last year remains steady, as most voters continue to believe the law will increase the federal budget deficit,” pollster Scott Rasmussen said yesterday in talking about a new national poll his firm released.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows 55 percent of likely voters favor repeal of the health care law, while 40% oppose repeal. Some 40 percent of likely voters strongly favor repeal while 30 percent are strongly opposed — showing passion remains on the pro-repeal side.
Rasmussen also found voters now trust Republicans more on health care, the second most important voting issue when they ranked their top ten political issues, by a 52% to 38% margin. In December, Democrats had a slight 45% to 43% edge.
Meanwhile, a new Quinnipiac University poll of registered voters, also conducted in early January, shows voters support repeal by 48 percent to 43 percent with 8 percent undecided. Support for repeal is bolstered by independents who want the measure repealed by a 54 percent to 37 percent margin, with 9 percent undecided.
“The Republicans pushing repeal of the health care law have more American people on their side,” said Quinnipiac’s Peter Brown. “While President Obama’s poll rating has improved in recent weeks, the coalition against his health care plan remains and is quite similar to the one that existed when his numbers were at their nadir.”
A new Associated Press poll out this week shows a plurality of Americans oppose the Obamacare law, which has prompted significant abortion-funding and rationing concerns for pro-life groups. The poll also found fifty-nine percent opposed the individual mandate while 31 percent supported it — the part of the legislation requiring every American to purchase health insurance (that could potentially fund abortions).
Finally, a new Gallup/USA Today survey also released this week shows only 13 percent of Americans like the law as it is written.
The plurality in the new poll (32 percent) want the law repealed entirely while 25 percent want the law scaled back and 24 percent want it to be more liberal. So that’s 57 percent who want less of the Obamacare law compared to 37 percent who don’t want any rollbacks of it.
Leading pro-life groups continue to support repeal, including the Family Research Council.
As Tony Perkins, the FRC president, told LifeNews.com: “The final health care bill passed into law last March contains provisions to fund abortion and to ration health care. Additionally, the law creates a huge unfunded mandate on both businesses and states, guaranteeing closed businesses, lost jobs and pushes states closer to fiscal disaster that will inevitably lead to more bailouts from the federal government — all to pay for the monstrosity that is Obamacare.”
“Passage of H.R. 2 is the first step in protecting taxpayers from being forced to fund abortions and being under the thumb of a federal bureaucracy for their health care needs,” he said.
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.”
When Congress passed the government-run health care bill, it did so without any limits on abortion funding and language mandating taxpayer financing of abortion in certain circumstances.
Obama eventually issued a controversial executive order supposedly taking the abortion funding issue off the table.
However, virtually every pro-life group said it would not mitigate the abortion funding because it doesn’t have the effect of law, could be reversed in the future, and because it didn’t tackle much of the abortion funding in the bill. The Obama administration could also ignore the order and not put it in place when the health care law goes into effect.
Under the new health care law, states will be in charge of their own health care exchanges that are available for individuals and small businesses.
The exchange doesn’t go into effect until 2014 and states are filing lawsuits seeking to stop the pro-abortion health care bill in its other pro-abortion provisions entirety, but states are moving now to exercise their right to opt out of some of the abortion funding.
Arizona, Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana have passed similar bills that have already been signed into law by governors in those states and several other states are expected to consider legislation in their upcoming legislative sessions. Governors in Oklahoma and Florida vetoed similar legislation.
