Poll Shows Huge Opposition to Ryancare’s Medicaid Cuts

Eighty percent of swing-voting independents, and 54 percent of GOP voters oppose cuts to Medicaid proposed by the GOP’s Ryancare plan, according to a new Quinnipiac poll.

The Medicaid question provided one of the few clear responses to a series of broad questions about opinions towards the still-forming GOP plan to reform the Obamacare healthcare network. The clear Medicaid question is useful because the GOP’s plan would clearly roll back, or cut, roughly 14 million people from Medicaid over the next several years, according to an estimate by an agency in the Department of Health and Human Services.

The Quinnipiac poll asked voters, “Do you support or oppose decreasing federal funding for Medicaid, a government program that helps pay for health care for low-income Americans?” The overall response was 74 percent against, including 80 percent opposition from swing voters and 54 percent opposition from GOP voters, among the voters who will decide the pending 2018 elections.

However, the poll did not show what percentages of the public had “strong” or “somewhat” opinion on each question.

The poll of 1,o56 voters was taken from March 16 to March 21, when little about the plan was known — or agreed upon — nationwide.

The vague questions in the poll included one asking for an assessment of President Donald Trump’s healthcare policies: “Do you approve or disapprove of the way Donald Trump is handling – health care?” The response was 29 percent approval and 61 percent disapproval.

Another question asked “As president, do you think Donald Trump should – support efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, or not?,” which delivered a 45 percent positive answer and a 51 percent negative answer.

Another question, even vaguer than the prior questions, showed that 55 percent of voters want Congress to “repeal parts” of Obamacare. The pollsters did not ask which parts should be repealed or preserved.

However, the pollster did ask about funding for Planned Parenthood. The question “Do you support or oppose cutting off federal government funding to Planned Parenthood?” showed 68 percent opposition among swing-voters and 71 percent approval Republicans.

The poll did show little confidence among the public about whether the emerging GOP plan would help or hurt.  When asked “what kind of impact do you think the Republican health care plan would have on your health care; do you think it would have a positive impact, a negative impact, or do you think it wouldn’t have much impact either way?” 47 percent of swing voters responded “not much impact, ” and only 12 percent of the independents expected a “positive impact.”

Read the entire poll here.