In mid-January, Republicans made the official first step in repealing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) by voting 227-198 in permitting the GOP to bring their bill for repeal of the ACA to Congress without Democratic interference. It’s a first step with giant consequences, considering now comes the process of picking apart President Obama’s Healthcare Reform Plan and finding what to keep, what to remove, and how to immediately replace what is missing.
And yes, many Americans have been completely confused by this process. Many have heard chants over anti-Obamacare and President Trump’s battle cry of calling it the “Unaffordable Care Act,” yet many didn’t even realize that Obamacare is the ACA. “Obamacare” is just another name for the ACA. If you’re reading this for the first time or the twentieth, the misguided notion among many remains.
However, regardless of party affiliation or stance on Trump’s administration. One thing is for certain: all Americans want access to healthcare at a cost that they can live with. That surpasses any inherent feelings toward any other issues that were presented at the podiums during the election cycle. But what exactly does that mean to Trump’s devout supporters at the end of the day? Last month, Drew Altman, Chief Executive of the Kaiser Family Foundation, penned an op-ed for the New York Times about this very question.
The KFF is known for fair and balanced surveys that aim to simply inform. In his op-ed, Altman highlighted Trump supporters’ distaste for the ACA, derived from a survey the KFF conducted within the Rust Belt of the United States—a hotspot for Trump voters. Their conflicted views on the ACA were due to apparent bad experiences with it. However, the problems were not about the quality of the healthcare; rather it was the so-called affordability of it in the face of rising premium costs, drug costs, and the constant need to switch their plans annually to keep within budget. It’s like playing stocks when you have no knowledge of the market.
While the focus group included people from the Rust Belt from various walks of life—from Marketplace consumers to those on Medicaid—most trusted the new President’s decisions on healthcare, yet didn’t quite know where he planned to go from here. Altman further explained that when the focus group was advised that many of Trump’s proposed healthcare reform actions would lead to higher deductibles, they simply didn’t believe it.
The general consensus was basically this: an ideal plan would be affordable premiums, include cheaper medication or at the very least access to it, and little to no out-of-pocket costs. The group seemed unbothered that some Americans would ultimately be less healthy if that proposed affordability didn’t apply to them. Every consumer for themselves.
