After Obamacare was passed by Congress back in March of 2010, the blistering attacks have been relentless. As a result public opinion of the national health care reform, that was never very high, tanked.
Obamacare was demonized as a government take-over of healthcare that would put bureaucrats between you and your doctor (i.e. death panels). Those of us who understood that none of this was true and that there were enormous benefits for all U.S. citizens and small businesses in Obamacare were outnumbered and out flanked by boisterous opponents. Yet we marched on.
One of the problems we advocates faced was the slow rollout of benefits under the Affordable Care Act. For a long time we only had the promise of more affordable healthcare. Then slowly the American public started seeing some of the benefits. Another significant problem was that the Obama administration and many members of Congress who voted for the Affordable Care Act failed to champion the reform on the stump leaving the well-heeled opponents much of the public relations landscape to define Obamacare.
But with the Presidential election has come a resurgence of positive communication about how Obamacare has already delivered more affordable healthcare to millions of Americans and small businesses and what the even better benefits are right around the corner. With that public opinion is now shifting again.
The Kaiser Health Tracking Poll now shows that more of the public has a favorable opinion of Obamacare (45%) than a negative opinion (40%). This is certainly still not a rousing public approval of the reform but the trend is in the right direction. And for those of us who have been in the trenches it is a welcome turn of events.