Will Blue-Collar Whites Change Their Minds About Obamacare?
These voters overwhelmingly oppose the Affordable Care Act. Yet millions of them have gained health-care coverage under the law.
The impending Republican drive to repeal the Affordable Care Act is crystallizing the class contradiction long embedded in the health-care debate.
From the start, President Obama’s health-care reform has faced fierce opposition from working-class whites, the same constituency that anchored Donald Trump’s electoral coalition. But blue-collar whites have been among the law’s principal beneficiaries, particularly in the Rustbelt states that tipped the 2016 race to Trump. The critical question now is whether the practical prospect of losing coverage will dislodge the ideological skepticism about the law that is endemic in white working-class communities.
