Northwest Indiana Discussion

Americans’ views of the 2010 healthcare law have worsened in recent weeks, with 40% approving and 55% disapproving of it. For most of the past year, Americans have been divided on the law, usually tilting slightly toward disapproval. The now 15-percentage-point gap between disapproval and approval is the largest Gallup has measured in the past year.

Currently, 73% of Democrats, 39% of independents, and 8% of Republicans approve of the healthcare law. Approval is down at least marginally among all three groups since Gallup’s last update in late October.

Since the government health insurance exchanges opened on Oct. 1, Americans’ views of the healthcare law remained fairly steady even amid reports of widespread technical glitches with the websites.

More recently, President Barack Obama has had to respond to charges that he misled Americans when he repeatedly said those who liked their current insurance plans could keep them. Many insured Americans are now being dropped from their health plans, perhaps because the plans do not meet the minimum requirements for coverage mandated by the healthcare law. Obama has apologized for making those assurances and said he would explore options to help those affected.

The timing of this drop in approval of the law suggests it may be linked to the controversy over the millions of Americans losing their current health insurance coverage.

. . . President Barack Obama’s credibility may have taken a big hit with voters, but he’s also in serious danger of permanently losing the trust of Democrats in Congress. The Obamacare debacle has been bad enough that it’s tough for Democrats to take on faith that the president can fix the problems. His one-time allies are no longer sure that it’s wise to follow him into battle, leaving Obama and his law not only vulnerable to existing critics, but open to new attacks from his own party.

“I don’t know how he f—-ed this up so badly,” said one House Democrat who has been very supportive of Obama in the past.

The first test of unity: how many Democrats vote for a bill Friday penned by Michigan Republican Rep. Fred Upton. The legislation would allow people to keep their canceled insurance plans through 2014.

A rocky beginning to the opening of the new health insurance exchanges has also taken its toll on how Americans perceive the Affordable Care Act. Now, approval of the law has dropped to 31 percent – the lowest number yet recorded in CBS News Polls, and a drop of 12 points since last month. Sixty-one percent disapprove (a high for this poll), including 46 percent who say they disapprove strongly.

Republicans are nearly unanimous in their disapproval of the law, and now more than two-thirds of independents agree. Almost six in ten Democrats continue to support the law, but their support has dropped 16 points from last month – from 74 percent in October to 58 percent today. Support has dropped 11 points among independents and five points among Republicans.

Millions of people are expected to lose their employer-based healthcare coverage over the next decade, according to business surveys and estimates by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

By 2016, the CBO has projected that 6 million fewer people will receive employer-based health insurance compared with this year. The estimate includes those who could obtain coverage through their work but choose not to.

Experts say the healthcare law is not the cause of the general shift by employers from providing healthcare, but acknowledge supporters of the law will have to defend it.

“We had rising costs before the [Affordable Care Act], and we had employers dropping coverage before the ACA. … But in politics, these things are fair game,” said Dan Mendelson, president of the consulting firm Avalere Health.

While the White House is currently focused on the wave of plans canceled in the individual market, the move away from employer-based health insurance could pose an even bigger political problem in the years after ObamaCare is fully enacted.

(CNN) – If you like your health insurance plan, you might still be out of luck.

At least if you live in one of the seven states that have rejected the President Barack Obama’s proposal to allow health insurance companies to renew plans not in compliance with the Affordable Care Act.

The proposal was meant to help the President keep his promise to millions of Americans who have received cancellation notices from their insurance providers, and would allow companies to renew current plans for one year while people transition to the federal insurance exchange.

Because insurance is regulated differently in each state, the president’s plan first requires approval from governors and state insurance commissioners, many of whom have been hesitant to make changes for 2104 so late in the year.

On Tuesday, New York became the largest state to reject the proposal. Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, told reporters during a press conference that he doesn’t think the President’s fix is necessary for New York.

“We haven’t had the kind of issues in New York in our exchange that they’ve had nationwide,” Cuomo said. “Our program has actually been working well, the website has been working well, and we’ve had actually very good success with our program so we don’t see any reason to change it now `because we’re not having those types of issues.”

New York joins Washington, Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Indiana in rejecting the President’s proposal.

The Obamacare rollout has been a debacle, with delays in the implementation of mandates, technical glitches in the exchanges, cancelled individual policies and more.

It’s about to get worse. The federal judiciary is currently hearing four cases challenging decisions made by the Internal Revenue Service that could soon deliver more major blows to the Affordable Care Act.

One such decision extended subsidies provided by Obamacare for lower-income individuals and families (those making up to four times the povery level) to people in the 36 states served by the federally-operated exchange, HealthCare.gov.

But the law spells out clearly that such federal subsidies will be granted “through an exchange established by the state” – not that they can be granted by the federal government.

Sweeping differences in health care exchange pricing among states and counties is leading to sticker shock for some middle-class consumers and others who aren’t eligible for subsidies under the Affordable Care Act.

The average prices for the most popular plans are twice as high in the most expensive states as those with the lowest average prices, according to a USA TODAY analysis of data for 34 states using the federal health insurance exchange.

PPOs, the most popular type of health care plan, carry monthly premiums that range from an average of $819 a month in the most expensive state to $437 in the least expensive. Plans on the federal and state exchanges are grouped into four categories that cover 60% to 90% of out-of-pocket costs. USA TODAY looked at the pricing of PPOs and HMOs across these bronze, silver, gold and platinum categories.

The premiums for bronze-level plans are generally the least expensive, but “the deductibles are simply not affordable,” says Laura Stack, a former financial analyst looking for full-time work and using her 401k to pay for health insurance. “Many will not be able to afford the per person deductibles before insurance begins to pay. What are you really paying for?"

The percentage of Americans who say that Obamacare has either hurt them and their family or has had no effect yet outnumbers those who say it has helped by a margin of approximately 10 to 1, according to a new poll released by Gallup.

On Nov. 23-24, Gallup asked 1,034 adults this question: “As you may know, a few of the provisions of the healthcare law have already gone into effect. So far, has the new law helped you and your family, not had an effect, or has it hurt you and your family?

Only 9 percent said that Obamacare had helped them and their family. Meanwhile, 19 percent said it had hurt them and their family and 69 percent said that it had had no effect on them and their family.

Yes, the launch of healthcare.gov was “unsuccessful,” White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters on Monday. But that’s beside the point, he suggested:

“I think the heart of the matter is, was the launch of the website unsuccessful? The answer is yes. Was it absolutely our responsibility to take every measure necessary to make the fixes we could make so that that website functioned more effectively for the Americans who want — they don’t want an effective website. They want health insurance. They want affordable, quality coverage. And that’s what we’re working to achieve.”

Most of the questions directed at Carney on Monday involved the problem-plagued website, which was quickly overwhelmed with visitors — 375,000 by Monday noontime, Carney said. The “improved” website, instead of shutting down, is now supposed to send excess visitors into a waiting queue, where they may leave an email address requesting notification when the website isn’t so busy.