Labor & Employment Law

Republicans Take Cue from Pinocchio on Health Care Reform

By Mike Hall

Republicans have never let facts stand in the way of their attacks on health care reform. Who can forget the whopper lie that the new health care reform law would hasten your grandmother?s earthly exit? Or the one about heart patients waiting in long lines for their ration of cardiac medicine? The latest lie about the Affordable Care Act comes as conservative groups and House Republicans gear up for a campaign to repeal the law by claiming polls show the majority of  Americans back repeal.

Robert Schlesinger at U.S. News and World Report takes a look at those claims and finds that once again, the truth is missing in action. Headlines and conservative talking heads reported that the latest CNN/Opinion Research poll shows 54 percent oppose the health care reform law. That was the answer to a simple, ?Do you support or oppose? question abut the new law.

But drill down a bit and you?ll find another number familiar to those who have paid attention?but one generally lost amid the noise of the conservative healthcare narrative of backlash against government overreach. Only a relatively small minority of Americans dislike the new law because they think it goes too far.

Here?s the key question from the poll, ?Do you oppose that legislation because you think its approach toward health care is too liberal, or because you think it is not liberal enough??

Of those surveyed, 43 percent said they favored the law as it is; 37 percent opposed it because it was ?too liberal? and 13 percent opposed it because it ?wasn?t liberal enough.? Writes Schlesinger:

Or to put it another way, 56 percent of Americans either like the law or would prefer that it was more robust.

As Washington Monthly?s Steve Benen writes about the same poll:

So, when you see the top-line results and see that 54 percent oppose the law, this is not to say that 54 percent have bought into the right-wing demagoguery and think Republican criticisms have merit. On the contrary, one could look at the same results and say that a 56 percent majority either supports the law or want it to be even more ambitious in a liberal direction.

When Republicans try to gut the Affordable Care Act next year, insisting that the country is with them, it’s worth remembering a pesky detail: They’re wrong.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on December 30, 2010 (boomark / email).