As we eagerly await the Supreme Court’s decision on the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, expected shortly after 10 a.m. Thursday morning, much of the political Left remains mystified by the health-care law’s continued unpopularity.
According to an Associated Press/GfK poll released last week, 47 percent of Americans oppose the health-care law, while just 33 percent support it. Similarly, a Rasmussen presidential-election poll released just this week found that 54 percent of likely voters want the law repealed. And even more devastating, a New York Times/CBS News poll, which traditionally skews Democratic, found that fully two-thirds of Americans wanted either the individual mandate or the entire law to be found unconstitutional.
In the face of this ongoing opposition, the media has trotted out the usual excuses. First, the public doesn’t understand all the good things the health-care bill will supposedly do for them. As Chris Cillizza said on MSNBC, “People don’t know what they want.” They point to surveys showing that Americans express confusion about what the law would or would not do. Other surveys show that some benefits of the law, such as allowing children to stay on their parents’ policy until age 26 or guaranteeing coverage for individuals with preexisting conditions, are quite popular, even if the overall bill is not.
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