Key voting bloc boosts Obamacare to highest approval ever as Congress battles over soaring costs: poll

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Obamacare subsidy fight intensifies as GOP pushes plan to steer subsidies directly to patients

Fox News senior medical analyst Dr. Marc Siegel joins 'Fox & Friends' to discuss a GOP-backed plan to shift Obamacare subsidy dollars directly to patients through health savings accounts.

The steep partisan divide in Congress over the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, reflects a similar rift among the public — except for when it comes to independents. 

Despite the program’s climbing costs, 63% of respondents with no party affiliation hold a positive view of Obamacare, according to polling released by Gallup on Monday. It's a finding that's helped drive the program's overall approval to new heights even as lawmakers struggle to find answers on making it more fiscally sustainable.

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Discussions about rising costs for healthcare, primarily surrounding Obamacare, have divided Republicans as they contemplate whether to reform or replace the system. (Lea Suzuki/The San Francisco Chronicle via Getty Images; Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

The view among independents completely breaks down along party lines. The polling, conducted in partnership with the West Health-Gallup Center on Health Care in America, found that 91% of Democrats approve of the program, while only 15% of Republicans hold the same view. 

Those findings indicate that Americans are more split on Obamacare’s effectiveness than ever. At the same time, a record 57% of respondents overall said they held a positive view of Obamacare where 35% said they held a negative view — the greatest disparity between the two positions since Gallup started tracking it in 2013. This year’s polling puts Obamacare’s approval rating at its highest ever, according to Gallup.

Gallup’s polling comes as lawmakers in Congress wrestle over what tweaks can be made to make Obamacare more affordable or if the country would be better off replacing it entirely. 

Those deliberations began with the smaller question of whether to extend emergency, COVID-19-era assistance for the program. 

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Top congressional leadership pictured alongside each other; Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and John Thune, R-S.D. on the left, and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., on the right. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images; Evan Vucci/AP Photo )

Lawmakers must decide whether to extend Obamacare’s COVID-19 enhanced premium tax credits before they sunset at the end of the year. Democrats fear that letting those subsidies expire would increase the cost of health insurance overnight for the vast majority of Obamacare enrollees. Over 90% of Obamacare’s 24 million policyholders use the extended federal assistance Congress passed in 2021 to help users cover the cost of their healthcare premiums.

Fiscal conservatives, by contrast, argue that the country must return to pre-COVID spending levels and avoid the annual price tag needed to continue the temporary subsidies, which the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates is $30 billion.

While some Republicans view its costs as unsustainable, not all of them believe removing Obamacare outright would play well with Americans.

"I don't know that you can completely remove it. We have to have stability and certainty in the market as well," Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., told Fox News Digital when asked about continuing the program. 

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Rep. Harriet Hageman testifies on a resolution during a House Rules Committee meeting in the U.S. Capitol in Washington, June 11, 2024. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Senate Republicans are poised to unveil a proposal for how to address the expiring Obamacare subsidies sometime later this month. Amid many competing plans, it’s unclear what that proposal will contain.

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The Senate will also vote on the Democrats' three-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies in their current form. That vote is expected to fail amid staunch Republican opposition.