What Will Happen To Health Care Under Trump? Obamacare Becoming More Popular Among Voters

Throughout his successful campaign and into the first weeks of his presidency, Donald Trump has repeatedly emphasized the urgency of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act. But amid his and other Republicans' steps to nix the still-standing law, a recent poll found voters were seeing Obamacare in an increasingly favorable light.

A Politico/Morning Consult poll released Wednesday showed respondents were evenly split in their view on Barack Obama’s landmark 2010 health care law. Forty-five percent approved of it while 45 percent disapproved. That approval rating was up from a previous survey, which showed in early January that 41 percent approved while 52 percent disapproved.

“As the threat of the Affordable Care Act’s repeal has moved from notional to concrete, our weekly polling has shown an uptick in the law’s popularity, and fewer voters support repealing the law,” sKyle Dropp, Morning Consult’s co-founder and chief research officer, told POLITICO.

The poll also showed that 65 percent of respondents wanted to keep in place provisions that banned insurance companies from denying coverage to patients with pre-existing conditions. A plurality of respondents wanted to get rid of the individual mandate provision that requires a person to obtain insurance coverage.

Those views were somewhat in line with Trump’s, as the president has voiced support for the pre-existing condition provision and disdain for the individual mandate. But because those two provisions largely rely on one another to function properly, it remained unclear what the new administration had planned for the future of health care.

In one of his first acts as president, Trump signed an executive order allowing federal agencies to “ease the burden” of Obamacare until it could be fully repealed and replaced, though specifics were limited.

“We are going to be submitting in a couple of weeks a great health care plan that’s going to take the place of the disaster known as Obamacare,” Trump said Saturday at a rally in Melbourne, Florida. “Just so you understand, our plan will be much better health care at a much lower price. Ok? Nothing to complain about.”