Despite Biased Media Coverage, Americans Support Health Care Reform, Think Problems Will Be Fixed

A new CNN poll finds that despite wildly biased media coverage of the Affordable Care Act (aka, “Obamacare”) rollout, guess what? That’s right, it turns out the American people remain relatively positive about it. Exhibit A: Although the top-line numbers show that only 40% of Americans support “Obamacare” while 58% oppose it, when you look more carefully it’s quite a different story. In fact, it turns out that just 41% of Americans oppose the Affordable Care Act because it’s “too liberal,” while 40% support it. Then there are 14% who oppose it, but only because it’s not liberal enough. Add up the 40% who support “Obamacare,” and the 14% who want it to go even further, and guess what? That’s right, you’ve got 54% who want health care reform (either “Obamacare” or something more liberal) vs. 40% who don’t. That may not be the media narrative, but it happens to be the truth.



Second, despite the constant drumbeat about how horrible the rollout of healthcare.gov has been (did I mention HORRIBLE?!? DISASTROUS?!? heh), the American people actually remain generally optimistic about it. As you can see, by a 54%-45% margin, Americans believe the problems will “eventually be solved,” which is the correct answer of course. I mean, the fact is that in states like California where the website is working – as Paul Krugman pointed out earlier this week – “enrollment is surging,” with “more than 10,000 applications…being completed per day, putting the state well on track to meet its overall targets for 2014 coverage.” Again, you’ll almost never read about this in the corporate media, but it’s reality nonetheless. Fortunately, the American people appear to be far smarter than the corporate media gives them credit for. Also, perhaps people have simply stopped paying attention to all the doom-and-gloom nonsense the media churns out? Either way, it’s good to see.