Americans are weird. Well, Republicans are, anyway. It's long been a feature of polling that any provision of Obamacare polls much worse if it is called "Obamacare" than if it is simply described. Turns out, calling it "Affordable Care Act" doesn't seem to help very much in terms of popularity, according to
polling from Morning Consult.
When asked if Medicaid should be expanded for low income adults below the federal poverty line, 71 percent of registered voters said yes. When asked if Medicaid should be expanded “as encouraged under the Affordable Care Act”, support dropped nine percentage points.
The drop in support was strongest among Republicans. More than half of Republicans surveyed, 51 percent, agreed Medicaid should be expanded for low income adults below the poverty line. But when asked if Medicaid should be expanded as encouraged under the ACA, the number dropped 15 percentage points to 36 percent. In comparison, Democrats’ opinions did not change when the question was reworded, with 88 percent saying Medicaid should be expanded. Among independents, 70 percent said Medicaid should be expanded for low income adults below the poverty line. But for the reworded question, the number dropped 13 percentage points to 57 percent.
Republicans apparently believe that Medicaid should definitely be expanded to help more people, but are very picky about how that should be done. Clearly, they don't believe it should be done the only way now available—through Obamacare. Their generosity and charity is capped by their hatred of this law. No one ever accused Republicans of being rational, though, at least not since President Obama's election.
There's an interesting side note on Medicaid expansion in this polling. People in non-expansion states are far more likely to know that their state didn't expand than people in expansion states knowing that their state did expand. Seventy-one percent of people in the non-expansion states know that they're missing out. But 62 percent of expansion state people knew their state took the money. That's a remarkable degree of awareness in those red states, and you can bet a sizable chunk of those people believe their state did the wrong thing. That makes Medicaid expansion a potent issue for Democrats this fall.