Americans Barely Worry About the Health Care Deal

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published

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Health care problems do not sit high on the list of concerns of most Americans, even if the Supreme Court just upheld most of the Affordable Care Act of 2010. The decision does not solve a “pocketbook” problem. Tens of millions of Americans have more important and immediate concerns.

A new Gallup poll shows that among those queried:

Six percent say healthcare is the top problem in June, behind mentions of the economy, jobs, the deficit, and problems in government.

Americans face an economy that no longer creates jobs at a rate of well over 200,000 a month. As a matter of fact, employment growth may be nearly stagnant, which national unemployment rates for June and July could show. The deficit remains a likely cause of an expiration of tax cuts at the end of the year, which will undermine the ability of businesses and consumers to spend money. Economists say they already see the effects of this as spending drops in anticipation of higher taxes. And the inability of Congress and the Administration to agree on budget measures could pull the tax cut trigger.

Americans do not seem to care about what is over the horizon when what is on this side of it is so awful.

Methodology: Results for this Gallup poll are based on telephone interviews conducted June 7 to 10, 2012, with a random sample of 1,004 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.

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Douglas A. McIntyre

Photo of Douglas A. McIntyre
About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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