It doesn't take a poll to know that Congress is unpopular, but it doesn't hurt either:
Job approval of Congress has now reached 12% - matching the lowest ever recorded by the CBS News/New York Times Poll... just 6% of voters - the lowest percentage recorded in this poll - think most members of Congress deserve re-election, and 84% think they don't. 57% think their own representative does not deserve re-election.
As Markos said that last stat
should terrify congressional Republicans
(and current Democratic officeholders too, IMHO).
What if Congress could pass a simple tweak to an existing provision of a law that
-- Is currently very popular.
-- Would help lots of people.
-- Wouldn't cost the Federal Government a dime...
-- And might even be a net positive financially the government?
Okay, I know your first response is "Republicans would be against it!" And I'm sure they are and it has no chance of passing. But at least hear me out.
The health care law currently allows adult children to stay on their parents' health care plans or to enroll or re-enroll in their parents' plan until they are twenty-six years old. This provision of the PPACA has proved immensely popular -- more popular and widely used than any other aspect of the law, in fact. According to HHS:
...the percentage of young adults with insurance increased from 70.7% in 2009 to 72.8% in 2010. That translates into 500,000 more young people with insurance. We expect even more will gain coverage in 2011 when the policy is fully phased in.
An informal survey does by Nyceve and analyzed by yours truly showed that, of Kossacks who said they were helped by the new law, 55% said that they were helped because the law allowed an adult child to be on a parent's plan.
This should not be a controversial issue. A provision like this should be non-partisan and a no-brainer. Who doesn't like parents, or being able to take care of their kids?
What then should Congress do? Simple.
Why is twenty-six the pumpkin number? Why should people who are already on their parents' plan with no hope of finding employment which offers health insurance converage suddenly be dropped when they reach this age?
Here's a really simply tweak to this provision that Congress could enact in a matter of hours if they so wished:
a) Allow anyone who is covered by their parents' plan to be able to retain that coverage if they so wish until the subsidies and prohibitions on denial of coverage for pre-existing conditions kick in on January 1, 2014.
b) Allow anyone who is below the age of 28 (or 29, or 30...) to be enrolled on their parents' plan, just as now those who are less than age 26 can.
Not only will this not cost the federal government a penny, but by keeping more Americans insured costs to local, state and the federal government should be reduced. There will be that many less 'Ron Paul' victims -- young people who cannot afford insurance, become grievously ill, incapacitated or fall into a coma, and become wards of the state.
And it will make a lot of parents very happy too.
Harry Reid, are you listening? If nothing else, you could make Republicans even more unpopular than they already are. That alone would be worth the price of the popcorn.