News / Politics

ObamaCare benefiting only 15 percent of Americans

Monday, 29 February 2016 6:51 PM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 01 March 2016 12:52 PM ]

ObamaCare has only benefited a small group of Americans, poll shows.

Only 15 percent of Americans say they have benefited from President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare law, a new poll shows.

Signed into law by Obama on March 23, 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or ObamaCare, is a reform law that is intended to expand and improve access to healthcare and reduce the cost of health insurance.

This is while the poll released on Monday by the National Public Radio and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, found that a total of 56 percent of Americans do not think the law has affected them.

Among those affected, more people believe that ObamaCare has hurt them than it has helped them.

Among American adults, 36 percent think they have been personally harmed by the law since its passage, a fraction that also reflects participants who said they had noticed rising healthcare cost over recent years.

Moreover, 26 percent of Americans said the cost of healthcare has been a serious strain on their finances during the past two years.

About 40 percent of people with financial struggles stemming from their medical bills said they have spent all or most of their savings accounts on medical costs.

About one in five people said they have been forced to go without prescriptions because they can’t afford them.

Opponents of Obamacare argue that it was unconstitutional for the federal government to subsidize insurance in states that rejected their own exchange for the federal system.

The US House of Representatives passed a budget reconciliation bill in October that was aimed at repealing parts of ObamaCare and bringing to a halt federal funding for Planned Parenthood for one year.

However, Obama vetoed the bill.

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