A large majority of voters expect Obamacare to increase their health care costs while lowering quality, according to a poll from The Morning Consult.
The poll of likely 2014 voters found that 60 percent believe Obamacare regulations will hike their health care costs in the long run, while 28 percent believe their costs will remain unchanged. Just 11 percent of expected voters said they believed their costs would go down.
Meanwhile, more voters expect the quality and availability of health care will to suffer from the health care law. Forty percent think their coverage won’t change much either way and 37 percent think the Affordable Care Act will have a negative effect. Just 23 percent think Obamacare will boost their ability to access quality health care.
The results indicate that Republicans’ expected tactic of campaigning on Obamacare’s massive structural problems could be successful in 2014 midterms, as voters are overwhelmingly negative towards the health care law itself — not just its flawed roll-out.
A 53 percent majority disapproves of the ACA overall, while just 41 percent approve — down from 45 percent last month. Independents feel even more negatively about the law, disapproving by a margin of 61 to 32 percent.
Health care industry experts have increasingly found that health care prices are being upped in the post-Obamacare system, both on and off the exchanges. The individual market for health insurance has faced a 39 percent average increase in premiums since February 2013, while families’ insurance costs have been upped by 56 percent. That’s a larger increase than over the previous eight years. (RELATED: Report: Premiums rising faster than eight years before Obamacare combined)
Even those with employer-based health insurance who have no interaction with Obamacare’s exchanges are likely to be faced with higher costs as a result of the law’s new required services and taxes on health insurers.
A recent survey from consulting firm Mercer LLC found that a third of companies have raised out-of-pocket costs on their employee insurance plans in the forms of deductibles and co-pays, and another 48 percent are considering doing the same. (RELATED: 4 of 5 companies may hike deductibles due to Obamacare)
Voter resistance to Obamacare’s structural problems may leave Democrats even more nervous about their prospects this fall. Nate Silver, the former New York Times election analyst who predicted President Obama’s 2012 reelection, has already predicted that Republicans will take the Senate in 2014. (RELATED: Election analyst Nate Silver predicts GOP will win the Senate [VIDEO])
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