USA: Stakes high as Barack Obama awaits court ruling on healthcare

By PATRICIA ZENGERLE
Published on 25/06/2012 00:00

MOST Americans oppose US President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform even though they strongly support most of its provisions, a new poll has said, with the Supreme Court set to rule within days on whether the law should stand.

Fifty-six per cent of people are against the healthcare overhaul and 44 per cent favour it, according to the poll by Ipsos.

The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the 2010 healthcare reform, Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement, this week, possibly as early as today.

The political stakes are sky-high on an issue that has galvanised conservative opposition to the Democratic president, and how the court’s decision is framed politically could influence the outcome of the November presidential election.

The survey results released yesterday suggest that Republicans are convincing voters to reject Obama’s reform even when they like much of what is in it, such as allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26.

Strong majorities favour most of what is in the law. A glaring exception to the popular provisions is the “individual mandate,” which forces all US residents to own health insurance.

Sixty-one per cent of Americans are against the mandate, the issue at the centre of the Republicans’ contention that the law is unconstitutional, while 39 per cent favour it.

“That’s really the thing that has come to define the [reform] and is the thing that could potentially allow the Supreme Court to dismantle it if they decide it’s not constitutional,” Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson said. “Republicans have won the argument with independents and that’s really been the reason that we see the majority of the public opposing it.”

Republicans have dominated the political message on healthcare with calls to “repeal and replace” the law, condemned by conservatives as a government intrusion into private industry and the lives of private citizens. It passed in March 2010 with no Republican support in Congress.

The first lawsuits were filed the day Mr Obama signed the plan. By the end of January 2011, judges in Florida and Virginia had ruled it unconstitutional. Only then did the Senate and the House hold hearings on its constitutionality

Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, has promised to repeal the law if he defeats Mr Obama, although he has not offered a plan of his own. Mr Obama, who says he modelled the measure on a healthcare plan Romney passed as governor of Massachusetts, has defended it.

Obama critics have also questioned the president for focusing on healthcare reform early in his term instead of doing everything he could to fix the struggling economy.

Democrats back the measure as an effort to improve the lives of Americans and essential to control spiralling costs that are undermining the country’s overall economic health. Healthcare expenditures in the United States neared $2.6 trillion in 2010, more than ten times the $256 billion spent in 1980, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Support for the provisions of the healthcare law was strong, with a full 82 per cent of survey respondents, for example, favouring banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions. Some 72 per cent back requiring companies with more than 50 employees to provide insurance for their employees.