If things had gone as planned for leaders of the Republican Party, health care would be playing a major role in the 2016 presidential election.
At this time during a typical election year, a conventional candidate such as Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio would have been making the case against the Affordable Care Act based on the major premium hikes anticipated for many ACA plans.
As Republicans convene in Cleveland this week to nominate Donald Trump for president, however, it is clear that if their candidate does triumph over Hillary Clinton, it won't be because of health care.
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A new poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that Clinton holds a significant lead with voters on the issue of health care. Forty-six percent say she would be a better leader on the issue, compared to 32 percent who say Trump would be superior.
Similarly, many more voters (45 percent) said Democrats were more likely to effectively combat the Zika virus than Republicans (31 percent).
While Trump has of course decried Obamacare as a "disaster," and promised to put in place something "much better," the GOP nominee has largely ignored the issue throughout his bizarre campaign in favor of incendiary proposals on immigration, trade and national security.
When he has talked about health care, Trump has often offered contradictory positions that have left conservative health care policy advocates baffled. He has suggested that he favors an individual insurance mandate similar to that included in the ACA, before backtracking, and he has promised that he will be able to provide universal coverage, without providing much evidence of how he would accomplish that goal.
Other recent polls have suggested that Trump is favored in some areas over Clinton.
A survey by The New York Times and CBS found that 52 percent of voters said Trump would be stronger than Clinton in handling the economy, while the poll found voters were roughly evenly divided between the candidates on the issues of trade, terrorism and illegal immigration. Sixty percent of voters, however, saw Clinton as the better candidate with regards to race relations, compared to only 29 percent who said Trump was better.
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