Good news for Democrats: abortion is a strong motivator for voters

Voters know a lot about Roe being overturned, but not much about Democrats’ new health measures

Democrats and Republicans are sharpening their battle plans in the final stretch of the midterm campaign, aiming to find the right messaging to motivate their bases to get to the polls on Election Day.  

A new survey out this morning from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) has both good and bad news for Democrats. 

The good: Abortion is a stronger motivator for midterm voters now than it was in July. In particular, access to the procedure is motivating Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters in states where most abortions are illegal. 

The bad: The Medicare provisions in the party’s health-and-climate bill are popular among Democrats and independents. But few voters are aware of the law’s specific health provisions roughly two months after President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act.

Midterm elections see far fewer voters than in the presidential election years, meaning races will be won and lost by which factions turn out in November. That gives increasing importance to any issue that could drive voters to the ballot box. 

• “In the final weeks of the campaign, issues like abortion access or drug pricing could motivate small numbers of voters and shift some races, and potentially shift control of Congress,” said Larry Levitt, an executive vice president at KFF.

The topline: Roughly half of voters say the Supreme Court’s June decision overturning Roe v. Wade has made them more motivated to vote in this year’s election. That’s up from 43 percent in July — and from 37 percent in May when a similar question was posed shortly after the leaked draft. 

• Among those more motivated by the Supreme Court ruling, three-quarters said they plan to choose candidates who want to protect abortion access, compared with 17 percent who say they’ll vote for candidates who want to limit the procedure.

Democrats have been trying to capitalize on voter anger over the ruling. Senate candidates, as well as groups supporting them, have spent over $54 million on ads mentioning abortion. Those dollars have mostly been coming from Democrats. Just under $3 million was spent by GOP candidates and groups supporting them, according to data provided by AdImpact, which tracks commercials. (h/t our editor and former Health 202 author, Paige Winfield Cunningham)

The KFF poll also captured fissures among Republicans and within the antiabortion movement. Some of these divisions have already been on public display in the few state capitals that have attempted to pass new laws restricting the procedure since the Supreme Court’s decision. 

• For instance: Roughly 70 percent of Republican voters said they opposed prohibiting abortions in the case of rape or incest.
• About 65 percent were against allowing private citizens to sue those involved in abortions, which was first allowed in Texas, and 51 percent opposed making it a crime resulting in fines or imprisonment for a doctor to perform the procedure.

On Democrats’ health bill

For months, vulnerable Democrats fretted over the prospect of failing to secure a health-care win before the midterms. The party passed the legislation in August, and now lawmakers have to sell the new law in order for it to influence voters. 

The majority of voters support the package’s Medicare provisions, which are aimed at decreasing the cost of prescription drugs for seniors and those with disabilities. Three in four adults have heard at least a little about the new law, though few know what it actually does.

• Roughly 63 percent of people said they were unsure if the law placed a limit on out-of-pocket spending on prescription drugs for those enrolled in Medicare.
• About 60 percent surveyed said they were unsure if the package capped monthly out-of pocket costs for insulin for those on Medicare.
• Around 55 percent said they weren’t sure if the measure let Medicare negotiate the price of some prescription drugs.

Democratic Senate candidates are using it as a campaign message, although to a much lesser degree than abortion; they’ve spent around $15 million on ads in the general election that mention health care. 

Leslie Dach — who founded Protect Our Care, a Democratic-aligned health advocacy group — said he believes Democrats are campaigning on the bill, but that many advertisements aren’t specifically mentioning the name of the new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, when touting the new policy provisions. 

• “There’s more work to be done to educate the American public on what this law does for them,” he said. “That’s a job not just for this election cycle but for the next several years.”

Kaiser Family Foundation surveyed 1,534 U.S. adults between Sept. 15-26. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample. 

White House prescriptions

Biden finalizes plan to close the ‘family glitch’

The Biden administration finalized a rule yesterday that will allow millions more families to purchase health coverage with federal subsidies through the Affordable Care Act’s insurance marketplace.

The fix, first proposed by the Treasury Department in April, has been described as the most significant action the administration can take to build on Obamacare without Congress. 

The details: The rule fixes the so-called “family glitch.” Financial assistance to purchase Obamacare plans is typically meant for people who can’t get coverage through their job or a government-run program. But such help is available for people with particularly pricey employer plans, requiring them to spend roughly 10 percent or more of their household income on their health insurance premiums.

Until now, that threshold had been based on an individual’s insurance plan. It didn’t include how much it’d cost to cover a workers’ spouse or children — even if covering the entire household costs exceeds the law’s affordability threshold.

The final rule allows family members of workers who are offered affordable single coverage — but unaffordable household coverage — to qualify for premium tax credits to purchase ACA plans. The White House estimates that about 1 million people will either gain coverage or see their insurance costs decrease because of the change.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra:

Experts slam Florida surgeon general’s warning on coronavirus vaccines

Medical and public health leaders are condemning guidance from Florida’s surgeon general, Joseph A. Ladapo, that warned young adult men to stop taking the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna coronavirus vaccines, our colleague Dan Diamond reports. 

Ladapo’s recommendation was extrapolated from a short state analysis that has not been peer-reviewed, carries no authors and warns that its findings are “preliminary” and “should be interpreted with caution.” Experts described the announcement as politics masquerading as science.

Dan interviewed more than a dozen experts who listed concerns with Florida’s analysis. They said it relies on information gleaned from frequently inaccurate death certificates rather than medical records, skews the results by trying to exclude anyone with covid-19 or a covid-related death, and draws conclusions from a total of 20 cardiac-related deaths in men 18-to-39 that occurred within four weeks of vaccination without considering other potential factors.

In an interview earlier this week, Ladapo defended the vaccine study as an overdue effort to investigate risks associated with the vaccines. He has argued that high levels of immunity to the virus raise fresh questions about the shots’ risks versus benefits.

The firestorm has put a spotlight on Ladapo, whose efforts to discourage parents from getting their children vaccinated, challenge mask mandates and oppose gender dysphoria treatments for children have been both opposed by medical associations and lauded by conservatives.

Stephen Patrick, director at Vanderbilt University’s Center for Child Health Policy: