It is not surprising that a Democrat-controlled Congress, working with a Democrat president, managed to enact ObamaCare a little over a year ago. After all, supporters of the law had promised - bizarrely - that it would control medical costs while simultaneously extending coverage to tens of millions more Americans.
And yet, the public never got nearly as excited about ObamaCare as the president and Democrats in Congress did. Even if most Americans - and many members of Congress - didn't know all the details, the public had enough sense to realize, from the experience of huge cost overruns in other entitlement programs, that ObamaCare would not cut costs. Because of that and ObamaCare's other problems, opinion polls on the law didn't show big support for it around the time it passed.
But what is amazing and encouraging is that the public still hasn't been bamboozled by all the hype about ObamaCare. Ever since it passed, ObamaCare has gotten consistently low marks in opinion surveys. The Democrats' hoped-for acceptance of the law simply has not materialized.
In fact, the public is souring on ObamaCare even further. A recent Associated Press-GfK poll found that only about one-third of Americans now support the law! That's the least support the law has had since its enactment in 2010. Among senior citizens, just 29 percent back ObamaCare - and nearly 60 percent are against it. That may be because they are aware of how ObamaCare will shuffle money out of Medicare to pay for the law's big new spending.
Meanwhile, a recent Rasmussen Reports survey of likely voters finds a majority want ObamaCare repealed outright. Rasmussen has never found less than 50 percent support for repeal since the law passed, and never have more than 43 percent of respondents opposed repeal.
The man whom the president appointed as the head of Medicare, Donald Berwick, casually dismissed Americans' opposition to ObamaCare. He said the public is in a "psychological trap, where nothing looks good," the AP reported.
Actually, the public has its eyes wide open on ObamaCare and has seen through the budgetary smoke and mirrors that were used to pass it. Whatever ails U.S. medical care - and it certainly has problems - the American people realize that more federal control and spending is no solution.
Repeal of ObamaCare will be hard and may never happen. But Republicans in Congress who oppose it have strong support from the public, and should continue seeking to dismantle this unconstitutional law.