US President Barack Obama’s popularity has plunged to an all-time low, courtesy the bungled rollout of his signature healthcare reform law that has also resulted in many Americans receiving notices from insurance companies cancelling their existing health insurance plans.
A poll conducted by the Quinnipiac University found that as many as 54 per cent of Americans now disapprove of Obama’s job performance, with just 39 per cent approving of it.
Two other polls, conducted by Gallup and the Pew Research Centre, have also indicated that Obama’s approval rating has nosedived. Gallup put his approval rating at 40 per cent, and Pew put it at 41 per cent.
A more disconcerting finding for Obama in the Quinnipiac poll was that 52 per cent of the people now regarded him as not being honest and trustworthy. This has been attributed to the fact that contrary to Obama’s promise, many Americans who liked their existing health insurance plans are not being allowed by the providers to keep them.
“President Obama’s misstatement, ‘If you like your health plan, you can keep it,’ left a bad taste with a lot of people,” Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute, said in a statement. Although Obama has offered an apology on this score, he is coming under pressure from lawmakers of his own party to go beyond and fix the issue. Former President Bill Clinton has now joined them with a public comment that Obama should live up to his promise, repeatedly made to countrymen during his election campaign. “So I personally believe, even if it takes a change to the law, the President should honour the commitment the federal Government made to those people and let them keep what they got,” Clinton said in an interview to Ozy.com website.
While the official tabulation of enrolment was expected to be announced later on Wednesday, media reports put the number at less than 50,000 as against the targeted half-a-million enrolments.
With large numbers of Americans having started receiving insurance cancellation letters, House Republicans have drafted legislation to give consumers the opportunity to keep their coverage. Democratic Senator has also proposed similar legislation that would require insurance companies to reinstate the cancelled policies. And, 10 other Senate Democrats have demanded that the Obama administration extend the sign-up period.
White House spokesman Jay Carney, however, maintained that the cancellations apply to only about 5 per cent of Americans who obtained health care insurance, arguing that more than half of those people receiving termination notices would benefit from better insurance at lower prices either through expanded Medicaid or through new health care marketplaces. As for the rest, he said the President has instructed his team to look at a range of options.