| San Francisco Chronicle | - |
(Updates
with polling director comments starting in fourth paragraph. For more
on Obamacare, see EXT2.) Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The nation's youth, a
group that twice rallied behind President Barack Obama at the ballot
box, is failing to support his signature ...
| San Francisco Chronicle | - |
Youth Break With President Over Health Care in Harvard Poll
John McCormick, ©2013 Bloomberg News
Published 9:47 am, Wednesday, December 4, 2013
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Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- The nation’s youth, a group that twice rallied behind President Barack Obama at the ballot box, is failing to support his signature domestic achievement and increasingly disillusioned with his presidency.
More
than half of those 18 to 29 years old say they disapprove of Obamacare
and half expect it will increase their health-care costs, a survey by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics shows. Four in 10 say they anticipate the quality of their coverage will get worse because of the law.
In
a finding perhaps even more troubling for the White House, almost half
in that age group, the so-called millennials, say they’re unlikely to
enroll in insurance through a government exchange, even if eligible.
That could put at risk the economics of the Patient Protection and
Affordable Care Act, which needs young, healthy people to enroll in
large numbers to offset the costs of caring for older, sicker Americans.
“There are very few aspects of the health-care initiative that they approve of,” John Della Volpe,
the institute’s polling director, said today on a conference call.
“They think quality will decrease, that prices will increase, so it’s
not surprising that has taken a significant hit to the president’s
approval rating.”
Youth Summit
The
survey underscores the challenge as Obama, 52, and his surrogates mount
a three-week offensive to try to highlight the 2010 law’s benefits. The
president will speak today at a White House “Youth Summit” that aims to
“help get the word out to young Americans about how to enroll” in the
program, according to an administration statement.
An estimated 15.7 million Americans age 19 to 29 lack insurance, according to the Commonwealth Fund,
a New York-based foundation that works to expand access to health care.
The White House has said it needs 2.7 million young adults to buy
insurance through the government-run marketplaces that opened Oct. 1.
Without this group, premiums for older Americans with costlier medical
issues will rise, and the health-care program could falter.
Trey
Grayson, the institute’s director, said Obama has failed to communicate
the law’s benefits to young people, a group especially turned off by
troubles that plagued the program’s federal signup site because they’re a
generation that “lives digitally.” He said young people are also
hearing more stories about how they’re needed to subsidize the costs of
insurance for older Americans and not enough about the risks they face
in being uninsured.
‘Rational Conclusion’
“It’s probably a rational conclusion that they’re drawing,” Grayson said.
Among
the youth population, the president’s approval rating is sagging, as is
the case with the general public. The survey found 41 percent approval
for Obama, a number that drops to 34 percent when the younger Americans
are asked to rate the job he is doing on health care. It was the lowest
approval rating for Obama in the institute’s polling of his presidency.
Like
their elders, the group is also gloomy about the nation’s direction,
with 49 percent saying they think things are on the wrong track,
compared with 14 percent who said things are generally headed in the
right direction.
Obama’s falling numbers with young
people can partly be explained by a still struggling U.S. economy that
means fewer job prospects for young people after graduation, as well as
growing levels of student debt, Grayson said.
Jobless Rate
“That
takes its toll,” he said of an economy where unemployment remains at
7.3 percent. For young people between the ages of 20 to 24, the jobless
rate is 12.5 percent.
Since the institute took its
last youth survey seven months ago, Della Volpe said Obama’s approval
rating has dropped 15 percentage points among young women, by nine
percentage points among young men and by 12 percentage points among the
youngest segment of the group, those 18 to 24. A majority of those in
the youngest segment would vote to recall the president, if they could,
he said.
Even among young African-Americans, one of
Obama’s strongest set of backers, his approval has dropped from 84
percent in the last survey to 75 percent in this one.
“This is an across-the-board problem,” Grayson said. “You are seeing cracks in his base.”
Second Guesses
Some
young voters are second-guessing their support for Obama in his 2012
re-election campaign. The survey shows 55 percent say they backed him in
that contest, while 46 percent say they would support him if they could
recast their ballots. At the same time, support for last year’s
Republican nominee, Mitt Romney,
is up by just 2 percentage points, with 33 percent of the young voters
saying they supported him in the election and 35 percent saying they
would do so now.
The survey of 2,089 Americans ages
18 to 29 was taken Oct. 30 through Nov. 11, and has a margin of error
of 2.1 percentage points.
Since the poll was taken,
improvements have been made to the federal enrollment website. The
administration said traffic on healthcare.gov exceeded 1 million users
on Dec. 2.
--Editors: Jeanne Cummings, Mark McQuillan
To contact the reporter on this story: John McCormick in Chicago at jmccormick16@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jeanne Cummings at jcummings21@bloomberg.net
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