Most Americans Are Split Over Obamacare

As the Republicans begin their 37th attempt to repeal Obamacare, it begs the question of why are the Republicans continuing to fight this and get it repealed? While some may say that it is partisan politics at its finest or even that it is "sour grapes" that the Democrats got the PPACA (Obamacare) law passed in the first place. But if you look at the reality of the situation facing the country with the new law, Americans have a real fear or dislike for the overall concept. Having been in the insurance field (specifically insurance technology) for a number of years, I can tell you now that the implementation of the Health Insurance Exchanges is going to be a nightmare. The complexity of the online transactions and integrations is a massive under taking and added to that is the different models that the States and Federal governments are trying to use to provide Exchanges (both for Individuals and for Small Business) and you have a recipe for disaster. Additionally, given American Government agencies long track record in being unable to do much right the first time (or the second or third even) and not too mention doing anything within a budget, I think it will be safe to assume that this isn't going to end well for the American public. Think of how long it has taken Amazon to get the concept of online transactions perfected (15 years maybe?) and we are expecting the Government to try to replicate this in less than 2 years, this just is not going to happen...

So, back to the original topic of why the Obamacare law is continuing to be under attack in Washington. The fact of the matter, half of Americans don't like it, and I would venture to say that the percentage of "Don't Know/Refused" responders to the Kaiser Family study in April 2013 are probably either uninformed or don't understand the law yet, so that group you could safely could go either way, but if you notice the trend of that group as well it is INCREASING, and this is after the Obamacare media blitz that has been taking place for 2 years now, which indicates that people in that group might not really like the law after all. Regardless, the trend has shifted to more Americans are not really in favor of Obamacare and I believe this is due to the increase of all the potential pitfalls that are now coming to light across all levels of the implementation of the Health Insurance Exchanges.

At the end of the day, while some will accuse Republicans of just playing partisan politics with their repeated attempts to repeal the PPACA, a little deeper look into the true American sentiment about the new law tells a different story. Now it doesn't mean that America can't get this right, but there needs to be a long hard look at what we are trying to achieve here and make sure the approach we are taking will get us to where we want to be as a nation. The way things look now, it doesn't appear that this law started down the correct path, but let's hope we can steer the ship back on course for everyone's sake.

Peter J Gries created Health Insurance Exchange Envoy, an informational website to provide Individuals, Small Businesses, and Navigators with the most current information regarding Obamacare and the Health Insurance Exchanges.