Public support for Obamacare rose right after Donald Trump became president, a new poll reveals.
Approval ratings for Obamacare — which Trump intends to repeal — increased by 6 percentage points, to 47 percent of the public on the heels of Trump's inauguration, according to the Morning Consult/Politico survey.
In contrast, public disapproval of the Affordable Care Act, which had stood at 52 percent at the beginning of January, fell to 45 percent after Trump took office, the survey found.
A Morning Consult summary of the results noted that support for the ACA grew by a greater extent among voters who thought the country was on the "wrong track," with approval for Obamacare increasing by 13 percentage points among that group.
Approval for the law also increased by 11 points or more among urban voters, voters with incomes between $50,000 and $100,000 annually, and adults age 18 to 29, according to the poll, which surveyed 1,992 registered voters. The survey had a margin of error of 2 percentage points.
Shortly after being sworn in as president, Trump signed an executive order authorizing heads of federal departments to take actions to reduce fiscal or regulatory burdens on individuals, health-care providers and insurers, and states from the ACA.
On the heels of that order, the Health and Human Services Department suspended ads and outreach encouraging people to sign up for Obamacare plans on the federal marketplace HealthCare.gov.
However, on Friday, the Trump administration partially reversed that suspension, and said that automatic emails, phone calls and social media messages to prod people to sign up for HealthCare.gov plans would continue. Open enrollment in individual health plans like those sold on that and other Obamacare exchanges, ends Tuesday.
The Republican-led Congress has voted to set repeal of Obamacare in motion, at the same time GOP leaders discuss replacing the ACA with other health-care legislation.
But recordings secretly made last week at a Philadelphia retreat attended by congressional Republicans revealed how a number of them are worried about what that a replacement plan will look like, and the potential political fallout from it.
The ACA has been credited with increasing the number of Americans with health insurance coverage by 20 million. There is concern among Republicans that if a replacement plan leads to a significant reduction in the number of insured people, the GOP will suffer for it in the midterm elections of 2018.