Off to rocky start, Obamacare remains unpopular with most Americans

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Off to rocky start, Obamacare remains unpopular with most Americans

By Matthew Rusling (Xinhua) 08:16, October 24, 2013

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WASHINGTON, Oct. 23 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack Obama's signature healthcare reform remains unpopular with most Americans amid major problems with the plan's website.

A Gallup poll released Wednesday found that Americans overall disapprove of the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare, with 50 percent of respondents disapproving of the law and 45 percent approving, although approval of the law has inched up in recent weeks among Democrats.

The poll came after the Oct. 1 launch of www.healthcare.gov, the website that forms the law's centerpiece. The site is riddled with technical problemes preventing many visitors from completing enrollment, which has sparked much criticism from U.S. media, pundits and the Republican Party.

A dog-eat-dog political fight over the Obamacare between the White House and Congressional Republicans led to a 16-day government shutdown this month and pushed the country into a dangerous brink of a default on its debt.

The Washington Examiner in recent days revealed the site's main contractor had been fired by Canadian officials for poor performance, raising questions about the competence of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.

In a television interview with CNN Tuesday, Sebelius said Obama was unaware of any technical glitches prior to the launch of the website, which cost taxpayers 300 million U.S. dollars.

Obama said Monday at the White House that there was "no excuse" for the current technical problems, but urged patience. "The website has been too slow. People have been getting stuck during the application process. These problems are getting fixed," he said.

But the speech failed to convince Republicans. In response to the technical boondoggle, Republican Senator Marco Rubio said Tuesday he planned to introduce a bill that would delay the " individual mandate" -- the part of Obamacare requiring Americans to carry health insurance -- in a bid to give the government time to hammer out the website's myriad glitches.

But the bill is largely symbolic, and analysts said they did not expect it to gain enough traction to pass the Democrat- controlled Senate, let alone Obama's White House.

The ongoing Congressional strife over Obamacare underscores the larger fight over the country's future direction, with progressive Democrats preferring a larger government with more spending and safety nets and Republicans favoring a smaller government and less spending at a time when the country's 17 trillion U.S. dollar debt roughly equals its gross domestic product.

"This is much bigger than Obamacare. At the end of the day what this is really about is whether progressive, big government solutions can make the lives of middle class Americans better," Republican strategist Ford O'Connell told Xinhua.

"If they can't, the GOP is going to be in a better position in 2016," he said, referring to the next U.S. presidential elections. "But if Obamacare proves to be relatively successful, then progressives have a peg to hang their hat on."

But for Obamacare to work, the plan requires millions of healthy young Americans to offset the costs of older, sicker Americans. And since the fine for not purchasing healthcare insurance policies is relatively low, there is little incentive for young people to sign up for health insurance, analysts said.