We are nearing the grand finale of our long and disheartening election opera, one we dare not ignore because the outcomes matter so much. While the election results will not be determined by public reactions to the Affordable Care Act, the ACA’s fate will be mightily determined by Tuesday’s outcomes. What have we learned about our collective health future over the past 18 months and what might this mean for our health system’s future?
Public Opinion On Health Reform Is As Frozen Today As It Was In Spring, 2015
Kaiser monthly tracking polls show reliably unfavorable attitudes toward the ACA, slightly beating favorables, and stuck since 2014 in 40 percent purgatory. The advantages millions of Americans feel from ACA insurance coverage expansions and other access reforms are balanced by those who now blame the ACA for everything bad that happens in health care. The misnamed Pottery Barn rule—“if you break it, you own it”—applies here even though the dish was broken well before the ACA. Beyond this, if there is one thing on which both sides of the new Republican divide concur, it is a deep hostility towards ObamaCare. The election cycle seems to have only hardened these views.
HENRY KOTULA 