Roughly one in five American voters approve of the health care plan the House of Representatives passed last Thursday, according to a new poll.
Overall, 21% of voters supported Republicans’ American Health Care Act while 56% opposed it, according to a Quinnipiac University national poll published Thursday. The disapproval was consistent across all demographic groups — including breakdown by race, gender, age, education level and party — except for Republicans, of whom 48% approved of the plan, compared to a 16% disapproval rate.
The poll confirms reports that Americans are overwhelmingly not on board with the GOP’s plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. The AHCA in its current form would cut back on planned Medicaid expansions and allow states to waive the requirement to protect premium prices for pre-existing conditions. The Quinnipiac poll found that 64% of Americans approved of Obamacare’s protections for those with pre-existing conditions, and 75% of voters think it would be a “bad idea” to let states remove that protection, which AHCA allows.
The numbers are only slightly better than in March, when the House of Representatives decided not to vote on an earlier version of AHCA. A Quinnipiac poll showed only 17% of Americans approved of the plan then.
Overall, 66% of voters disapproved of how President Donald Trump is handling health care, and 28% approve.
Quinnipiac conducted the survey of 1,078 voters over the phone from May 4to 9. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points.
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