Voters Trust GOP on the Economy Despite Health Care Woes

It’s often said that reforming the U.S. health care system amounts to reshaping one-fifth of the economy. It’d follow, then, that voters would hold the GOP’s grotesquely unpopular health bills against its reputation on economic issues. But historic polling shows that the public doesn’t relate the two—and still today, it favors Republicans over Democrats on the economy by a significant margin.

Even before this year, when Washington’s majority party introduced two pieces of health legislation whose favorability registered in the teens, Americans trusted Democrats much more than the GOP on health care policy. This includes the years of Obamacare implementation, glitches and all (all survey data via the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll):

The gulf between the two parties narrowed to a strait in 2013, when galvanized congressional Republicans engaged in mostly vain but relentless work to pick apart the Affordable Care Act. That all changed this year: As of June, Democrats now enjoy the widest advantage they’ve held over their rival party on health care during the Obamacare era. The House and Senate GOP have put forth bills, the American Health Care Act and the Better Care Reconciliation Act, which have been poorly received thanks both to scary-sounding Congressional Budget Office estimates and the attempt to appease both moderates and conservatives. (The proposals instead have ticked off both, giving the legislation no base of support). Amid all this, the current health care law has become more popular—for the first time in its existence, it achieved sustained plurality of support in 2017.

There are political reasons why this would be perilous for Republicans. They’ve justified their electoral existence for more than a half-decade by saying they would dismantle Obamacare. Now they finally have the Oval Office and control both chambers of Congress. Yet they’re having an awful time following through.

A subtler drawback could be that the GOP becomes less trustworthy with handling the economy. The health care system’s immense size and tangible effect on an individual’s finances places the matter at the very center of economic policy. But voters still prefer Republicans to Democrats on the broader question.