No trust at all
by Tom Sullivan
Republicans are not "the party of health care" except on the president's Twitter feed.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's reluctance to engage the issue points to worry that the sitting president's focus on repealing the Affordable Care Act could hurt Republican election chances in 2020. The president's claims that "Republicans are developing a really great HealthCare Plan with far lower premiums (cost) & deductibles" than the Affordable Care Act led to pressure on the White House to back off until 2021.
That pressure may not hold the president's attention. Amid recent threats top close the U.S. border with Mexico and to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, during an Oval Office meeting Tuesday with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Donald Trump repeated that Republicans "will become the party of healthcare."
He promised Republicans would unveil their replacement plan (that is nowhere in evidence) “at the appropriate time.”
The Financial Times reports:
The importance of healthcare in US politics was demonstrated in the 2018 midterm elections. Exit polls showed that 41 per cent of US voters — a plurality — identified healthcare as their top issue of concern — marking the first time it had been a number-one issue for voters in more than a decade.Those numbers have only climbed. In a Gallup poll released April 1:
Fifty-five percent of Americans worry "a great deal" about the availability and affordability of healthcare, topping Gallup's list of potentially worrisome issues for the fifth straight year. A majority of Americans have said they worry a great deal about healthcare in each of the 18 years the question has been asked since 2001, more than twice as often as any of the other 12 issues most often measured.What's more, 55 percent of Americans support improving rather than replacing the U.S. health care system, a Quinnipiac University poll found last week:
People were in favor 55% to 32% of improving the current health care system instead of replacing it with something new. But when asked whether to remove the current system and replace it with single-payer through an expansion of Medicare to cover all citizens, 43% called it a “good idea” while 45% said it was a “bad idea.” By political party, 69% of Democrats and 42% of independents supported it while only 14% of Republicans did.As for whom they trust to make those changes, Republicans are not voters' first choice. A Politico/Morning Consult poll finds nearly 3 in 5 ranked their faith in Republicans for improving the system “not much” or “none at all.” In the March 29-April 1 survey, 53 percent of voters said they had “a lot” or “some” trust in Democrats.