Should President-elect Donald Trump choose to make good on his campaign promise to overhaul major parts of the Affordable Care Act, it looks like he’ll have the backing of American voters, according to a new Gallup survey.
Fifty-three percent of surveyed Americans say they disapprove of the major healthcare law, and only 42 percent said they approve, Gallup found.
The polling firm also found a plurality of voters (43 percent) want to see major changes implemented. A smaller, but not-insignificant, number of respondents (37 percent) said they want to see the law repeal and replaced, as Trump promised he would.
The new survey, which is based on a random sample of 1,019 American voters, aged 18 and older, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4 percentage points at the 95 percent confidence level.
Gallup reported:
In its annual November Healthcare update, conducted Nov. 9-13, Gallup asked Americans who approve of the ACA if they would like it kept in place as is, or kept but with significant changes. Similarly, Americans who disapprove of the ACA were asked if they wanted to keep it but with significant changes, or repeal and replace it.
Putting the responses to these two questions together, an overall total of 43% of Americans – a group that includes some who approved of it initially (28%) and some who disapproved (15%) – want to change the ACA significantly without repealing it. That is a slightly larger percentage than the 37% who disapprove and wish to see it repealed and replaced. Fourteen percent of Americans approve of the ACA and wish to keep it as is.
Widespread disapproval for the law has been the norm over the past four years, when Gallup first started regularly surveying voters approval for the healthcare law.
In the four years that Gallup has tracked the Affordable Care Act, approval has surpassed disapproval only once, and that was in November 2012 just before President Obama defeated former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
Since then, however, voter opinion for the Affordable Care Act has average 52 percent disapproval and 42 percent approve, according to Gallup.
Trump suggested in a recent interview that he would try to preserve two key provisions in the president’s signature healthcare law.
First, Trump would keep the ban on insurers excluding those with pre-existing conditions. Second, the president-elect signaled he would support holding on to the provision in the current law that allow people to remain on their parents’ insurance until the age of 26.
Republican lawmakers may use the next few years to phase out the law with a few immediate tweaks. It’s unlikely they’ll schedule any major, possibly disruptive changes to occur in the few years before the 2018 midterm elections.
“Whatever the exact course of action that ensues once Trump and the new Congress take office, it is clear that about eight in 10 Americans favor changing the ACA significantly (43%) or replacing it altogether (37%),” Gallup suggested.
