Affordable Health Care

The plague of disonfomation and outright manipulation and lying about the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, is understandable when you look at this chart.  Only 8% of the people polled felt that news media was a reliable source of information, and yet 81% of them are getting their information from this source that is held in such low esteem.  It is this disconnect that makes us all look foolish, but there is big money behind the disinformation--no, you do not need to get a rectal exam in order to quality for health insurance, but the Koch brothers want you to think that.  Why? Because the Affordable Care Act will save consumers and the government money.  So who loses?  The robber barons, that is who. 

Here are some facts.  While only 37% of Americans viewed the ACA favorably in a March Kaiser poll, most liked what the healthcare bill is scheduled to do. Over 55%, and up to 88%, of Americans regard the following facets of Obamacare at least somewhat favorably: tax credits to small businesses to buy insurance, closing the Medicare "doughnut hole", creating insurance exchanges, giving rebates to customers of insurance customers that spend too much on administrative costs, and the employer mandate. Even Republicans like all of them except the Medicaid expansion, increase in Medicare tax, employer mandate, and individual mandate.
Indeed, the only requirement of Obamacare most people didn't like was the mandate for all people to join it. Now, about that.  There is a lot of help out there for the poorest amongst us, those who currently cannot afford health care, and many people don't know about this.  More than a third of people are unaware of the health insurance exchanges, subsidy assistance to individuals, or the Medicaid expansion. The latter two provisions of the law have actually seen a decrease in the percentage of people who knew these policies were in the bill, since it first passed. And that it would cost them more--again, not so for the majority of people, especially those who can ill afford it.  I have friends who are self-employed who found out this week that they can get health insurance with better coverage for 1/5 of what they have been paying.
More worryingly, more people than not thought that Obamacare includes a public option, undocumented immigrant insurance, "death panels", and cuts to Medicare. The Affordable Care Act contains none of these.  The fact is most of Obamacare is liked by the public. The issue is that the provision that is not liked is the best-known. 

Which is not an accident, I fear.  So what are House Republicans afraid of?  That they are wrong about this.  That the law will be incredibly popular and successful, and they will be shown to be like the Emperor who has no clothes.