Most Americans oppose healthcare reform

Most Americans oppose Barack Obama’s healthcare reform even though they strongly support most of its provisions, a Reuters/Ipsos poll showed, with the Supreme Court set to rule within days on whether the law should stand.

This is the most important week of Mr Obama’s bid for a second term in November.

The ruling could have a profound affect on the presidential contest between Mr Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

The law has two central aims: To reduce rocketing healthcare costs and expand the number of people with health insurance, as one sixth of Americans have no health coverage.

Fifty-six percent of people are against the healthcare overhaul and 44% favour it, according to the poll.

The survey results suggest that Republicans are convincing voters to reject Mr Obama’s reform even when they like much of what is in it, such as allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26.

Strong majorities favour most of what is in the law.

A glaring exception to the popular provisions is the “individual mandate” which requires most US residents to own health insurance.

Sixty-one percent of Americans are against the mandate — the issue at the centre of the Republicans’ contention that the law is unconstitutional — while 39% favour it.

In good news for Republicans at November’s congressional elections, 45% said they were more likely to vote for a member of Congress who campaigned on a platform of repealing the law, versus 26% who said it would make them less likely, the survey showed.

The political stakes are sky-high on an issue that has galvanised conservative opposition to the Democratic president, and how the court’s decision is framed politically could influence the outcome of the Nov 6 general election.

The healthcare case has been fiercely debated as a test of whether Congress can require individuals to buy health insurance under its power to regulate commerce.

Opponents have likened it to forcing Americans to buy healthy food, such as vegetables.

Support for the provisions of the healthcare law was strong, with a full 82% of survey respondents, for example, favouring banning insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions; 61% are in favour of allowing children to stay on their parents’ insurance until age 26; and 72% back requiring companies with more than 50 employees to provide insurance.

Americans are strongly divided along partisan lines.

Among Republicans, 86% oppose and 14% favour the law and Democrats back it by a 3-to-1 margin, the Reuters/Ipsos poll showed.

However, in what could be a key indicator for the presidential contest, people who describe themselves as political independents oppose the law by 73% to 27%.

Republicans have dominated the political message on healthcare with calls to “repeal and replace” the law, condemned by conservatives as a government intrusion into private industry and the lives of private citizens. It passed in Mar 2010 with no Republican support in Congress. Democrats back the measure as an effort to improve the lives of Americans and essential to control spiralling costs that are undermining the country’s overall economic health.