A Novel Idea: Americans Favor Democratic Policies

According to the latest congressional news accounts, incoming House Speaker John Boehner plans on bringing up the repeal of health care reform as one of the initial votes on the agenda of the new Congress.  This seems interesting in light of the fact that he and his Republican colleagues are cloaking its agenda as “doing the people’s business”.  Upon closer inspection, this seems to be another GOP contradiction.

Polls have consistently shown that when people are asked about specific aspects of the health care law, voters overwhelmingly favor them: allowing kids to stay on their parents’ insurance policy up to age 26y, prohibiting insurers from denying coverage based on a pre-existing condition, barring companies from dropping clients due to an illness and requiring preventative care coverage in plans.  Additionally, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has scored the budgetary aspects of the law and projects that it will actually reduce the federal deficit over time.  Yet, the  conventional wisdom is that people view the law unfavorably and “Obamacare” has become a dirty word.

This is very similar to the 2000 presidential campaign where many voters had an unfavorable opinion of Vice President Al Gore, yet when polled on his stances on issues specifically, a majority were aligned with him.  Granted, the health care reform law was not perfect.  However, it appears this is more of a political problem than a policy one.  Any law would eventually be viewed negatively if such disparaging descriptions as “socialism” and “government-run health care” were continually attached to it on a massive scale as the Republicans have done.

Democrats— most notably— President Obama— need to stand up for their accomplishments on health care reform.  Get the message out that people actually favor what is in this law.  Just imagine if Democrats took to the airwaves and spoke out about all the items in health care reform that people favor while Mr. Boehner was trying to repeal it.  Get this positive message out in a clear-cut, simple message at every opportunity, and see how the Americans react to the GOP’s attempts to shut down the federal government over it as they attempted to do in the 1990s.  It might just seal the deal for a second Obama term— just for starters.

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