Politics

Poll: 48 percent say House GOP health care bill is a bad idea

Mark Murray
WATCH LIVE
Key Points
  • 52 percent of Republican respondents say the GOP health-care legislation is a good idea.
  • 77 percent of Democrats believe it's a bad idea.
  • The gap between good idea and bad idea is larger than the NBC/WSJ poll ever found for Barack Obama's health-care plan.
President Donald Trump speaks while flanked by House Republicans after they passed legislation aimed at repealing and replacing Obamacare, during an event in the Rose Garden at the White House, on May 4, 2017 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images

By a two-to-one margin, Americans say that the health-care legislation that was recently passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and supported by President Trump is a bad idea instead of a good idea, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.

Forty-eight percent say it's a bad idea, including 43 percent of respondents who "strongly" believe that.

By contrast, just 23 percent call the legislation a good idea, including 18 percent who "strongly" say that.

That 25-point gap between good idea and bad idea is larger than the NBC/WSJ poll ever found for Barack Obama's health-care plan. Back in December of 2013, following problems with the rollout of the HealthCare.Gov website, 50 percent had said the Obama plan was a bad idea, versus 34 percent who said it was a good idea.

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This past February, however, 43 percent of Americans called the Obama plan a good idea, while 41 percent said it was bad.

On May 4, the House approved legislation - by a narrow 217-213 majority - to repeal and replace Obama's Affordable Care Act. No Democrats voted for the bill, and the legislative activity has since moved to the U.S. Senate.

According to the new NBC/WSJ poll, 52 percent of Republican respondents say the GOP health-care legislation is a good idea, versus 77 percent of Democrats who believe it's a bad idea. Among independents, it's 44 percent bad idea, 18 percent good idea.

The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted May 11-13 of 800 adults - including nearly half by cell phone - and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.5 percentage points.