Majority of Voters Still Question Health Care Waivers, Think They Should Be Given To All
Voters remain concerned that the new health care law will cause some employers to drop their health insurance coverage, and most still question the exemptions to the law the Obama administration is granting to some businesses.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 64% of Likely U.S. Voters continue to think it is at least somewhat likely that the new law will cause some companies to drop health insurance coverage for their employees, but that’s down from 73% in October. Forty percent (40%) believe the law is Very Likely to cause some companies to drop their coverage.
Twenty-five percent (25%) take the opposite view and don’t think the law will lead companies to drop employee health insurance coverage. (To see survey question wording, click here.)
Yet 60% of voters think it is a bad idea for the administration to give waivers to companies that have announced the law would force them to drop health insurance coverage for their employees. That’s up slightly from 56% in October. Only 18% think the waivers are a good idea, and another 21% are not sure.
Sixty-one percent (61%), in fact, think that if selected companies receive an exemption from certain aspects of the health care law, all companies should be treated the same way. Twenty percent (20%) now disagree and say all companies should not be given that exemption, but 19% more are undecided. These findings are comparable to the previous survey.
Most voters continue to favor repeal of the national health care law, but now that the Republican-run House has voted to repeal and sent it on to the Democratic-controlled Senate for action, confidence that the law ultimately will be repealed has fallen to its lowest level in four months. Voters with health insurance have been closely divided for months over whether the new law will force them to change that coverage.
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The survey of 1,000 Likely Voters was conducted on January 29-30, 2011 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.
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