As Republicans continue to barrel towards repealing the nation's
healthcare reform efforts regardless of the suffering it will cause,
their efforts continue to get even more wildly unpopular among voters.
Many in the Republican base are still fine with it, because they would agree to saw off their own legs and glue live chickens to the stumps if they thought Barack Obama would be against them doing that, but anyone with a preexisting condition, anyone who has health insurance now that didn't have it before, anyone on Medicaid who couldn't get it before and anyone who has a basic sense of decency isn't a fan. And Republican disapproval, too, is rapidly rising:
As the GOP-led Senate prepares to take up the measure, only 35 percent of voters surveyed approve of the bill passed by the House last month. Nearly half of voters, 49 percent, disapprove of the bill. The other 16 percent don’t know or don’t have an opinion, the poll shows. POLITICO/Morning Consult polling indicates the bill has become less popular since the House advanced it in early May. Immediately after the bill passed, slightly more voters approved of the bill, 38 percent. Opposition to the bill was lower, too, immediately after the House passed it: 44 percent.Which is the one and only reason Senate Republicans are keeping their version of the bill a closely-held secret until the last possible moment: They know the public is going to hate it. It's going to look very much like the House bill, it's going to uninsure millions of American citizens for no other reason than to pass the House-style tax cuts, people are going to die as a direct result and nearly everybody in America knows all of that.
Many in the Republican base are still fine with it, because they would agree to saw off their own legs and glue live chickens to the stumps if they thought Barack Obama would be against them doing that, but anyone with a preexisting condition, anyone who has health insurance now that didn't have it before, anyone on Medicaid who couldn't get it before and anyone who has a basic sense of decency isn't a fan. And Republican disapproval, too, is rapidly rising:
Among Republican voters, 30 percent disapprove of the GOP health care bill. That is up from 15 percent of Republicans disapproving in early May.That’s a trend that Republicans can’t afford to see continue, hence both the secrecy and the speed. There won’t be hearings because the Republican leadership simply can’t afford to have their own base continue to hear about this thing—and given that only a third of all American voters like it, total, that shows you just how despised it is among voters who aren’t a part of their base.
[I]ndependent voters disapprove of the bill by a 2-to-1 margin: 26 percent approve, versus 53 percent who disapprove.That's abysmal. You could get higher approval ratings by promising to give everyone in America free herpes.
[F]ew voters are cheering for the legislation’s passage. Only 27 percent think it will make the U.S. health care system better, compared to 41 percent who think it will make the system worse. Just 17 percent think it will decrease costs for them and their families, while 46 percent think costs will increase.Voters are making a dramatic statement here: All but a handful detest this "reform" effort and oppose Republicans following through on it. And nearly everyone is clear on the effects, saying this bill will hurt both the overall U.S. healthcare system and them, personally.
The bad news is that the Republican lawmakers installed by those voters simply do not seem to care. At all. Rather than listening to voters warning them about how disastrous the bill will be they've decided to hunker down and simply not tell anyone what will be in it from now on, rushing to pass a final version within days of public release so that the public won't have a chance to either review it or complain.
Why? What's in this for Republican lawmakers? It's going to cost them votes even among their own base, it's going to open them up to endless future campaign commercials each featuring individual Americans from their own states and districts who lost insurance, or care, or even loved ones due to the Republican effort, and in return they get—what?
What's being promised to them that outweighs all that?
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