Poll: Opposition to GOP Healthcare Bill is Rising

GOP Senate leader, the always despicable Mitch McConnell

As Senate Republicans meet in secret to draft their  "healthcare reform" bill - secrecy is admitted to be needed given how harmful the bill will be to millions of Americans and is aimed at leaving opponents with out time to educate the public on the toxicity of the bill - a new poll shows that public opposition to the GOP is rising.   I don't quite understand the mindset where passing something horrible and harmful to millions with little time for any public review is supposed to lessen the ultimate political fallout.  The details will get out either before or after a Senate vote, and those who voted to harm millions will not go un-wounded  once their constituents understand the extent of the betrayal.  A piece in Politico looks at the already rising opposition to Trumpcare.  Here are highlights:

As the GOP-led Senate prepares to take up the measure, only 35 percent of voters surveyed approve of the bill passed by the House last month. Nearly half of voters, 49 percent, disapprove of the bill. The other 16 percent don’t know or don’t have an opinion, the poll shows.

POLITICO/Morning Consult polling indicates the bill has become less popular since the House advanced it in early May. Immediately after the bill passed, slightly more voters approved of the bill, 38 percent. Opposition to the bill was lower, too, immediately after the House passed it: 44 percent.

The poll underscores the risks Republicans face in pursuing legislation for which opposition is creeping toward a majority of voters. The Senate’s so-far behind-closed-doors drafting process also complicates Republicans’ efforts to sell the proposal to their own voters — and there’s some evidence of slippage among the GOP base on the party’s Obamacare repeal bid.

Among Republican voters, 30 percent disapprove of the GOP health care bill. That is up from 15 percent of Republicans disapproving in early May.

Moreover, independent voters disapprove of the bill by a 2-to-1 margin: 26 percent approve, versus 53 percent who disapprove.

Other measures similarly show few voters are cheering for the legislation’s passage. Only 27 percent think it will make the U.S. health care system better, compared to 41 percent who think it will make the system worse. Just 17 percent think it will decrease costs for them and their families, while 46 percent think costs will increase.

And while voters haven’t heard much about the Senate’s progress, they want the GOP to work with Democrats on the final bill. Nearly two-thirds of voters, 65 percent, say they want Republicans to “compromise with Democrats to reach bipartisan reforms.” Only 18 percent want the GOP to “work only with other Republicans in Congress to achieve reforms.”

Even among GOP voters, a 54-percent majority wants the party to work across the aisle on the final product.

And Republicans are on perilous political ground, according to the poll's generic ballot test. Forty-three percent of voters say they would support the Democratic candidate for Congress in their district, compared to only 37 percent for the Republican candidate. Among voters who say their most important issue is health care, the Democratic candidate leads by 38 points, 61 percent to 23 percent.

Are giving huge tax breaks to the very wealthy that important to the GOP that depriving millions of coverage - including children and the elderly - outweighs all else?  The GOP is morally bankrupt and so are the evangelical Christians who vote Republican.