Congressional Republicans have consistently voiced their determination to delay implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). … Conservative opposition to the ACA is partly driven by fears that, once fully implemented, the program will prove popular and thus be difficult to roll back. My new research suggests that these fears may be justified.
The research, conducted with Princeton’s Katherine McCabe, builds on a long-standing finding from political science: Policies, once created, generate constituencies who benefit from those policies and will therefore oppose efforts to reform or repeal them. This “policy feedback” is what Republicans want to avoid and Democrats want to cultivate. CONT.
Amy Lerman (UC Berkeley), Washington Post