GOP Health Care Mandate?

A recent poll, conducted by McClatchy is being headlined as follows: New Poll undercuts GOP claims of midterm mandate.   This appears to be a reaction to the posturing the speaker-of-the-house-to-be John Boehner and other GOP leaders have been doing since successfully recapturing the House majority in the mid-term election.  I've touched on the impact of the GOP House results before.

Here are the top 3-reported results in a graphical presentation:

I'll focus on the health care reform portion of the poll.  Overall, not incredibly insightful results.  810 registered voters were involved, and the stated margin of error is +/-3.5%.  Assuming the health care "unsure" group stays the same as reported (which 5% of everyone seems to be unsure or uneducated in almost every poll, no matter the subject involved), it would appear the keep and repeal groups are basically the same size, given the margin of error. 

The release goes on to claim that voters want to keep the more "popular" parts of health care reform, like barring insurers from denying coverage for pre-existing conditions (59% in favor, 36% against), extending child coverage to age 26 (68% in favor, 29% against), and closing the Medicare Part D "donut hole" (for my previous explanation of this point, click here).  Those analyzing the poll results also claim voters don't like some other parts of the law, like an individual health care insurance mandate (65% claiming it is unconstitutional, 29% in favor).  For purposes of this discussion, we'll assume that someone who responded in the "unconstitutional" category was "against" the mandate from a personal opinion perspective, though technically someone could personally support the mandate from a policy perspective but also believe it technically unconstitutional.

So, if you boil it down, those polled apparently, at a rate of 2-to-1, want to have their cake and eat it too.  All of the "popular" aspects of the law (costs) are supported, while the parts of the law that (arguably) make it work financially are opposed.  Specifically, the individual mandate (which helps ensure that people don't wait until they're sick to seek coverage) is necessary to attempt to balance the acceptance of individuals without pre-existing coverage restrictions.  Realistically, you can't have one without the other, but the poll results appear to show that Americans are more interested in an ala carte approach.  Seems the majority of those polled would like to skip their vegetables and fill up instead on fat and sugar-filled dessert.  Given the state of health in our country, this seems to fit.

As I've stated in a previous blog post, it's extremely unlikely, despite the posturing of the GOP leadership, that the health care reform law will be repealed in full.  With a divided Congress, and an Obama White House, wholesale repeal is not a realistic or achievable goal for the GOP.  However, I believe it is dangerous to consider partial repeal or weakening of these less popular aspects fo the law, while leaving the more popular aspects unchanged or strengthened.  In the end, the health care law was about cost (as is almost everything Congress involves itself in) and if Congress were to bend to the popular opinion, we would further endanger our country financially, undermining other efforts underway to find ways to improve the long-term financial stability of our country. (not to mention that such changes would destabilize and destroy current health insurance)

As for the question of a mandate for the Republicans in Congress, I fail to see any aspect of a mandate for the GOP.  Republicans captured only the House, and the Senate remains in Democratic control.  I would say we instead saw a mobilization of portions of the Republican base (and a lack of inspiration for the Democratic base) mixed with a healthy dose of general dissatisfaction with the slow economic recovery orchestrated by the Democrat-weighted Congress..  A Republican claim of a mandate is purely posturing.  So, despite a lack of hiding partisan bias in the presentation of the poll results, the McClatchy headline is, I suppose, technically correct...