A majority of Americans polled do not want the Supreme Court to overturn ObamaCare’s protections for people with preexisting conditions, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Even among Republicans, 66 percent of respondents said they did not want to see the preexisting condition protections overturned.
Overall, the poll showed 79 percent of respondents do not want the court to cancel coverage protections for Americans with preexisting conditions.
But only 58 percent of respondents said they want the court to keep the health law in its entirety, with a large partisan gap between Democrats and Republicans. According to the poll, 89 percent of Democrats want to keep the entire law, but only 16 percent of Republicans do.
The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in a Republican-backed lawsuit that seeks to strike down the entire law next month.
Despite attempts by congressional Republicans to downplay the likelihood of the law being overturned, the Trump administration supports the challenge.
President Trump does not have a plan in place if the lawsuit is successful, and other plans by GOP lawmakers would not offer the same level of protections. Yet 85 percent of Republicans who were polled said Trump “has a plan” to maintain the protections if the law is overturned.
Eliminating ObamaCare would leave roughly 21 million Americans without health insurance, and would allow insurance companies to once again charge more or deny coverage to people with preexisting conditions.
Democrats have been drilling on the lawsuit this week during the confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Judge Amy Coney Barrett, whom they argue will be the deciding vote against the law.
The Kaiser poll also showed that the public trusts Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on health care far more than Trump.
According to the poll, Biden has the edge over Trump on all health care issues, including among voters age 65 and older.
The poll found Biden had at least a 20-percentage point advantage among voters on who they think has the better approach to making decisions about women’s reproductive health choices and services, determining the future of ObamaCare and maintaining protections for people with preexisting conditions.
On COVID-19, 54 percent of respondents said they prefer Biden’s plan for dealing with the pandemic, and 50 percent said they prefer his plan for developing and distributing a vaccine.
The survey was conducted Oct. 7-12, after the first presidential debate and Trump’s announcement that he had tested positive for COVID-19.
The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample of 1,207 respondents.