Lurking behind the first government shutdown in 17 years are two starkly different views of how Americans see the health-care law championed by President Barack Obama.
In making the budget fight all about the law, popularly known as Obamacare, Republicans point to a program they say is broadly and consistently unpopular. Democrats see a program that Americans aren't quite sold on yet but believe should be given time to work—and they note the health law is actually less unpopular now than the Medicare prescription-drug benefit was before it went into effect.
Complicating the debate, recent polls provide ammunition to both sides. Surveys reveal an American people clearly ill at ease over the law, but also uncertain over its provisions and ambivalent about its eventual impact.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid marked Tuesday's launch of the health law's insurance marketplaces.
The parties' divergent views of the law's public reception were on full display Tuesday, the first day of the partial government shutdown, which overlapped with the launch of the online insurance exchanges that are the heart of the new law. The partial shutdown hasn't affected the rollout of these new marketplaces, which are funded by mandatory spending, not the discretionary spending that Congress hasn't been able to agree on.
Mr. Obama, in a Rose Garden speech, acknowledged "glitches" in the rollout but noted that "most Republicans have made a whole bunch of predictions about this law that haven't come true."
Republican lawmakers continued to press their case that the law would drive up insurance costs, reduce paid work hours as employers hire fewer full-time workers, and make life difficult for average Americans. Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann said in a statement Tuesday that her office was "flooded" with messages from "Americans who are deeply concerned" that the law would have a negative effect on their families.
Polling consistently shows public ambivalence. The most recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, from early September, provides a snapshot of public attitudes that have stayed relatively constant since the law was signed in early 2010.
In all, 31% saw the law as a good idea, while 44% saw it as a bad idea; others had no opinion. Some people who dislike the law think it doesn't go far enough and would prefer a single-payer system, where the government effectively controls the health-care system.
At the same time, a majority of respondents said the law was having no impact either way on their families.
In a poll released Tuesday, only 34% of respondents said Congress should cut off funding for the law. In the survey by Quinnipiac University, more than 70% said they opposed shutting down the government as a path to cutting off funding for the health law.
"It is true that Americans aren't in love with Obamacare," said Peter Brown, assistant director of the Quinnipiac poll. "But the numbers show they also don't want the government to be shut down to stop it."
Americans' views of the law also vary considerably depending on how it is described, and whether a person is insured already or not.
A CNBC poll last week found that people reacted much more negatively when asked about Obamacare than when asked about the Affordable Care Act, although both refer to the same law.
At the same time, that poll found a slight plurality of the uninsured—the people who would be most affected by the law—think it is a good idea, while the strongest base of opposition is among those who pay for their own private insurance and don't receive coverage from an employer.
Supporters of the health law argue that it will gain favor as people become more familiar with it, as happened after President George W. Bush rolled out the Medicare Part D prescription-drug benefit nearly eight years ago. The program, designed to help defray the amount seniors had to pay for many prescriptions, was widely panned at the start as overly complicated and bureaucratic.
On the eve of that program's implementation in January 2006, seniors still had sharply unfavorable views of the law. A December 2005 poll found that 50% of seniors looked unfavorably on the program, compared with 28% who liked it. Within a year, those views had essentially reversed, with 42% saying they liked the program and 34% saying they didn't.
Political skirmishing to mold public opinion toward the new health law comes as its implementation is just getting under way. For all who hold fixed views on the law, many more—especially among the uninsured it was designed to help—say they still understand little about it how it will work.
The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation completed a recent poll of 2,000 Californians without health insurance. A plurality, 40%, were more optimistic than pessimistic about the law's impact on their lives, while 20% tilted more toward pessimism. But 70% said they still had little understanding of the law's provisions.
Write to Neil King Jr. at neil.king@wsj.com
A version of this article appeared October 1, 2013, on page A4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Chasm in Health-Law Views.
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