Obamacare Premiums Are Down This Year — But No One Knows It

Here are a couple of other interesting tidbits from the Kaiser tracking poll that I wrote about earlier this morning. First off, just about everyone—Democrats, Republicans, and Independents—thinks that Obamacare premiums have gone up this year:

In fact, average premiums have gone down, an indication that the marketplace has started to stabilize. It would be worthwhile for Democrats to crow about this, don’t you think?

But even with misconceptions about premiums widespread, favorable approval ratings for Obamacare have finally opened up a steady and seemingly permanent gap:

Favorable opinions have stayed about 10 points above unfavorable for more than a year now. This took longer than I expected, but it looks like Obamacare is slowly but surely becoming an accepted part of the American social welfare landscape, just like Medicare and Social Security.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate