This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, February 13th, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Obamacare's unpopularity has only accelerated since the law passed, but could public opinion about the specifics

of the law drive positive reform.

Emily Eekins is a research fellow at the Cato Institute and the Reason Foundation's

Polling Director, we spoke this week.

Obamacare was not popular when it passed. It has become less popular over time. What do we know from the latest recent Root poll about how people

think about Obamacare today?

Well, one interesting finding is that a majority of Americans say that they prefer the health care system that was

in place prior to the passage of the Affordable Care Act.

And not a great health care system to start with.

Which was already problematic.

And this shows that, that I mean one of the

justifications for the Affordable Care Act was that the health care system was so

bad before we needed this reform. Well Americans aren't convinced that we made things better.

Again, the reason Root Poll does a lot of stuff with costs and benefits, whereas other pollsters

would just talk about benefits or cost-free programs, what do we know about people's

tolerances for certain costs given certain benefits?

Sure, one thing that just about all Americans can agree upon, the one thing that they are

unwilling to give up is waiting longer to see a specialist when they need to see one.

Now waiting longer to see a doctor for a

preventative check-up that's annoying and no one would would want that but that's

...