The latest public opinion poll from the Pew Research Center has found that fifty-four percent of the American population holds a favorable opinion of the affordable care act, more commonly known as Obamacare. The approval is still split among partisan lines - as eighty-nine percent of Republicans disapprove of the legislation, while eighty-five percent of Democrats approve of it - but a solid boost in approval among independent votes has the legislation at high support, even as the newly elected Trump administration and Republicans in both houses of Congress debate plans to replace the highly controversial law.
Republicans have fought for years for Obamacare repeal
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was passed by the Obama administration with a Democratic Senate and House in 2010. Intended to expand health insurance to more Americans and increase health care quality, the law enacted many provisions. The most significant among the law's many changes to health care in the United States was an individual mandate forcing everyone not covered by employee insurance to either purchase insurance or pay a penalty, subsidies for health insurance for Americans within one-hundred and four-hundred percent of the poverty line, expansion of the Medicaid system, and forbidding insurance companies from denying people with pre-existing conditions.
The law has garnered an enormous amount of controversy and debate. President Donald Trump was elected on a platform which included a promise to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Now that Republicans hold power in Washington, a draft of their new replacement law has leaked, of which would end Obamacare's individual mandate, the subsidies, and all of the new taxes created by the law, as well as decreasing the Medicaid expansion.
The right has long been critical of the law as fiscally unstable and an infringement on individual rights, while many on the left view the law as insufficient and corporate-friendly and would prefer the United States implement single-payer health care.
Many angry over possible repeal of Obamacare
Many Republican lawmakers have been confronted at town halls by citizens angered over the possible loss of their health insurance. Former Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner has stated he believes that Republicans in Congress ultimately will not vote to repeal the law.
