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President Obama’s approval rating inched up in the latest
Reason-Rupe poll, but public approval of his handling of health
care remains low. 

The December
Reason-Rupe national telephone poll of 1,011 Americans
finds 47 percent approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his
job as president, up four points from our
September poll, while 50 percent disapprove of his job
performance. These numbers are similar to President GeorgeBush’s
approval ratings at a similar point in his presidency when
52 percent disapproved and 43 percent approved.

However, only 38 percent of approve of the president’s handling
of health care, while 57 disapprove.

While young people under 35 remain slightly positive Obama’s
general job performance (51% approve, 45% disapprove), 54 percent
disapprove of how the president is handling health care, while 38
percent approve. In fact a divide emerges among young people. Those
aged 25-34 who were key to Obama’s initial success in 2008, have
turned particularly negative toward the president’s handling of
health care: 61 percent disapprove while only 33 approve.
Conversely, younger millennials, between 18-24 are evenly
divided.

Under the Affordable Care Act,
many expect younger Americans to pay higher premiums to subsidize
the care of older, less healthy Americans. Moreover, those over 26
can no longer stay on their parents’ health insurance plans
exposing more of them to premium hikes. These factors have likely
fueled disapproval over health care.

Americans are feeling slightly more positive about the direction
the country is heading, although the latest Reason-Rupe poll finds
optimism is still quite low. Just over a third of Americans, 35
percent, believes the country is headed in the right direction, up
seven points from 28 percent in Reason-Rupe’s
September poll.

Four out of five Americans still disapprove of the job lawmakers
are doing in Congress, similar to findings in the September
poll.

Neither of the two major parties is spared from voters’ strong
disapproval. When asked which party, Democrats or Republicans, they
would prefer have a majority in Congress after the next
congressional elections, 36 percent of Americans said neither.
Thirty-three percent of Americans would prefer Democrats to control
Congress after the 2014 elections and 27 percent would prefer that
Republicans control Congress.

Nationwide telephone poll conducted Dec 4-8 2013 interviewed
1011 adults on both mobile (506) and landline (505) phones, with a
margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research Associates
International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe survey. Columns
may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full poll results,
detailed tables, and methodology found here. Sign
up for notifications of new releases of the Reason-Rupe
poll here.

President Obama’s approval rating inched up in the latest
Reason-Rupe poll, but public approval of his handling of health
care remains low. 

The December
Reason-Rupe national telephone poll of 1,011 Americans
finds 47 percent approve of the way Barack Obama is handling his
job as president, up four points from our
September poll, while 50 percent disapprove of his job
performance. These numbers are similar to President GeorgeBush’s
approval ratings at a similar point in his presidency when
52 percent disapproved and 43 percent approved.

However, only 38 percent of approve of the president’s handling
of health care, while 57 disapprove.

While young people under 35 remain slightly positive Obama’s
general job performance (51% approve, 45% disapprove), 54 percent
disapprove of how the president is handling health care, while 38
percent approve. In fact a divide emerges among young people. Those
aged 25-34 who were key to Obama’s initial success in 2008, have
turned particularly negative toward the president’s handling of
health care: 61 percent disapprove while only 33 approve.
Conversely, younger millennials, between 18-24 are evenly
divided.

Under the Affordable Care Act,
many expect younger Americans to pay higher premiums to subsidize
the care of older, less healthy Americans. Moreover, those over 26
can no longer stay on their parents’ health insurance plans
exposing more of them to premium hikes. These factors have likely
fueled disapproval over health care.

Americans are feeling slightly more positive about the direction
the country is heading, although the latest Reason-Rupe poll finds
optimism is still quite low. Just over a third of Americans, 35
percent, believes the country is headed in the right direction, up
seven points from 28 percent in Reason-Rupe’s
September poll.

Four out of five Americans still disapprove of the job lawmakers
are doing in Congress, similar to findings in the September
poll.

Neither of the two major parties is spared from voters’ strong
disapproval. When asked which party, Democrats or Republicans, they
would prefer have a majority in Congress after the next
congressional elections, 36 percent of Americans said neither.
Thirty-three percent of Americans would prefer Democrats to control
Congress after the 2014 elections and 27 percent would prefer that
Republicans control Congress.

Nationwide telephone poll conducted Dec 4-8 2013 interviewed
1011 adults on both mobile (506) and landline (505) phones, with a
margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research Associates
International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe survey. Columns
may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full poll results,
detailed tables, and methodology found here. Sign
up for notifications of new releases of the Reason-Rupe
poll here.

While President Obama recently
said, “We’re not going back” on health care reform, given the
choice, a majority of Americans say they would prefer to go back to
the pre-2010 health care system.

The December
Reason-Rupe poll finds that 55 percent of Americans would
choose the health care system that was in place before the
Affordable Care Act was passed, while 34 percent prefer the new
health care system designed by the 2010 federal health care
law.

Predictably, a hefty majority of Republicans, 78 percent, favor
the old health care system, while 53 percent of Democrats prefer
the Affordable Care Act. A third of Democrats, 33 percent, would
actually prefer the pre-2010 health care system. Independents side
with Republicans with 59 percent who favor the prior health care
system, while 31 percent the new system.

Support for the new health care system increases with education:
only 28 percent of those with high school degrees or less favor the
new health care system compared to 42 percent of those with
post-graduate degrees. Although educational attainments is
correlated with preference for the new system, income is not.

Even majorities of some of the cohorts the Affordable Care Act
was designed to help would prefer to go back to the old health care
system. Among those who do not have any form of health insurance,
54 percent prefer the pre-2010 health care system.  Slim
majorities of lower income Americans also favor the prior system.
Fifty-one percent prefer the old system among those making less
than $45,000 a year and 37% favor the new system. 

While younger Americans are evenly divided, attitudes diverge
between older and younger millennials. A majority (55 percent) of
older millennials (25-34 year olds) prefer the previous health care
system, 39 percent prefer the new system. In contrast, young
millennials 18-24 are evenly divided 44 to 45 percent.

Hispanics are divided with slightly more (49%) who say they
prefer the prior health care system over the ACA system (40
percent). Similarly, African-Americans are also divided but
slightly more (49%) prefer the new system over the previous one (40
percent). Only 28 percent of white Americans favor the new system,
while 62 percent favor the previous system.

Among the 34 percent who favor the Affordable Care Act system,
majorities oppose some of the key components of the law that has
defined the system: a little more than half of these respondents
oppose requiring younger people pay more for health insurance to
expand coverage to the uninsured and subsidize the costs of older
less healthy people and those with preexisting conditions. 
Americans who favor the new system are evenly divided over whether
asking younger people pay more for health care is justified if it
expands coverage for everyone, for instance to include mental
health care and maternity care. A slim majority (52 percent) also
feels low-cost, low-coverage health insurance policies should be
allowed, while 43 percent say they should be prohibited.

Nationwide telephone poll conducted Dec 4-8 2013 interviewed
1011 adults on both mobile (506) and landline (505) phones, with a
margin of error +/- 3.7%. Princeton Survey Research Associates
International executed the nationwide Reason-Rupe survey. Columns
may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full poll results,
detailed tables, and methodology found here. Sign
up for notifications of new releases of the Reason-Rupe
poll here.

“One word that kept coming up over and over again was the word
‘disaster,'” says Reason-Rupe polling director Emily Ekins when
referring to responses to the question, “What one word would you
use to describe the implementation of the federal health care law
so far?” Pollsters rated an overwhelming 65 percent of responses to
that question as negative.

Ekins sat down with Reason TV’s Zach Weissmueller to discuss the
portion of the results from the December Reason-Rupe poll focused
on the implementation of Obamacare in the wake of a disastrous
website rollout and the broken pledge that, “If you like your plan,
you can keep it.”

The poll found President Obama’s job approval rating at 47
percent, with only 38 percent of respondents approving of how he’s
handled the health care issue. But the problems seem to go even
deeper than that, with 47 percent of respondents answering that the
implementation of the health care law has decreased their overall
confidence in the government’s ability to solve problems. Even
worse for the president, 52 percent disagree with what they
perceive to be his view about the proper size and power of
government, and these numbers hold up among Obama’s key
constituency of 25-34 year olds. 

Watch the video above to hear Ekins delve deeper into these
results and more.

For full poll results, check out reason.com/poll.

Approximately 5 minutes long.

Produced by Zach Weissmueller. Camera by Sharif Matar and Tracy
Oppenheimer.

Click the link below for downloadable versions of this
video.

View this article.

Barack Obama’s not doing well in polling, and
while he’s spent the last year trying to raise as much money for
Democrats in 2014 as he can, his unpopularity is dragging down,
with 41 percent of respondents in a new poll saying they’d vote for
a Republican over a Democrat for Congress in 2014, the first time
the generic Republican’s come up on top for that question in
polling this year.

From the Quinnipiac Polling Institute:

President Barack Obama’s job approval among American
voters drops to a new low, a negative 38 – 57 percent, as the
outlook for Democrats running for Congress and the U.S. Senate
fades also, according to a national poll released today. He even
gets a negative 41 – 49 percent among voters 18 to 29 years old and
a lackluster 50 – 43 percent approval among Hispanic
voters. 

The president’s job approval compares to a negative 39 – 54 percent
score in a November 12 survey by the independent Quinnipiac
University. 

Rest of the polling results
here. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, seems to be
having fun not being president.

Follow these stories and more at Reason 24/7 and don’t forget you
can e-mail stories to us at 24_7@reason.com and tweet us
at @reason247.

We liked health care better the
old way, a majority of Americans say when
asked by Reason-Rupe pollsters about Obamacare. Across the
board, Americans disapprove of the president’s handling of health
care issues, have little faith in politicians’ ability to manage
the provision of medicine, and don’t think healthy, younger
Americans should be treated as milking cows to subsidize coverage
for older and sicker people. In fact, Americans generally agree
that the chief executive and Congress alike have amply demonstrated
that government is something of a deadweight hanging from the
country’s neck.

Americans still seem divided on what they wish
government could do for them. When asked whether they believed “the
less government the better” or “there are more things government
should be doing,” exactly 48 percent of respondents pick each one.
But when pushed to say whether “government is primarily a source of
good” or “is generally a burdensome part of society that impedes
the ability of people to improve their lives,” 54 percent said
government is a big friggin’ hurdle that bangs your shins every
time.

That’s the difference between hoping for a
unicorn, but admitting that you’re only ever going to get a
goat.

And what a goat. The launch of the Affordable Care Act has done
wonders to firm up the public’s opinion of government
(in)competence. Fifty-three percent of respondents have an
unfavorable opinion of the law after its jaw-droppingly flawed
debut, with a 47 percent plurality saying it has decreased their
confidence in government’s ability to solve problems.

Overall, 55 percent say they prefer the system that was in place
prior to passage of the 2010 federal health care law over
Obamacare—you know, the system that everybody used to hate before
they discovered it could get worse.

And it’s not just the general outline; the details of the health
care law turn people off, too. Majorities oppose prohibiting health
insurance companies from denying coverage or charging some
customers higher premiums based on pre-existing conditions, oppose
requiring younger, healthier people to pay more for health
insurance to subsidize care for others, and think low-cost,
bare-bones policies of the sort prohibited by the ACA should be
allowed.

Not surprisingly, after their interesting performances in recent
years, Congress and the president both get lousy marks for their
handling of health issues.

If the president liked high marks for transparency, maybe he
could have kept them by not snowing the public with phony
assurances about his signature policy achievement. As it is, a
majority of Americans think he was pulling their legs when he
claimed to preside over the “most transparent administration in
history.”

Well, if you want to see how something performs, there’s nothing
like a laboratory experiment. Too bad the whole damned country is a
laboratory for government suckage.

If only somebody had some ideas for reforming health care

without treating people like milking cows or idiot
children.

More poll results here
(PDF).