Voters are much less likely to support Obamacare’s protections for sick people when they find out they could personally face trade-offs as a result, according to the results of a survey released Monday by the libertarian Cato Institute.
Yet those same trade-offs appear to bother people less than the last time Cato did the survey, a year-and-a-half ago.
The poll published Monday found that 65 percent of voters support prohibiting health insurance companies from refusing to cover sick people or charging them more. But support dropped to 49 percent when people were asked whether they would still want the protections if their insurance costs were to go up, to 44 percent if it meant worse healthcare, and to 44 percent if it meant less access to medical tests and treatments.
But opposition in the face of trade-offs was higher when Cato conducted the survey in February 2017, a time when Republicans were working to repeal the healthcare law. That survey found that support for the protections was at 63 percent and dropped to 39 percent when people were asked whether they still wanted the protections if it meant higher costs to them, to 31 percent if it meant worse healthcare, and to 27 percent if it meant less access to medical tests and treatments.
[Also read: Republicans abandon strategy of highlighting Obamacare’s losers]
The newer survey, done in conjunction with YouGov, took answers from 2,498 respondents from Oct. 26-29.
Cato’s findings come just a day before voters are headed to the polls following months of political campaigns across the country in which candidates are running on promises to protect protections for pre-existing illnesses, such as cancer or diabetes.
Because Republicans have tried, through Congress and the courts, to undo the law, Democratic attack ads have depicted a GOP-dominated future as one in which millions of people with serious medical conditions would lose healthcare coverage.
But the way Obamacare went about guaranteeing the coverage has priced out certain customers, created narrower networks of doctors and hospitals, and either left them uninsured or severely harmed their finances. Republicans used to focus their campaigns on this group, but this election season they instead have focused their campaigns on trying to demonstrate that they favor similar protections as Obamacare.
