Over at Vox, Sarah Kiff reminds us that the
Affordable Care Act is now five years old. Better known as Obamacare, the
legislation has accomplished more and cost less than even it supporters expected.
However, a new poll conducted for Vox shows that 83 percent
of Americans still hold the same opinions on the law they did in 2010, and that
more than half of those who have changed their minds have become more negative
toward the law.
That conclusion is misleading. Americans don’t disapprove of
the health care law; they disapprove is what they think the health care law is.
Four of five Americans either say the price tag has gone up, or aren’t sure,
even though, as Kiff reports, the law’s price has actually decreased as
compared with initial estimates. Only 13 percent know the law met its
first-year enrollment goals with room to spare.
These results are consistent with several other polls. The
data suggest that only 49 percent of Republicans believe that Obamacare has
increased health coverage, when in fact the percentage of uninsured Americans
has declined by a third. Seven in ten Republicans and one in three Democrats believe
health care costs are rising as a “direct result” of Obamacare, even
though Obamacare has had a negligible effect on insurance premiums for people
who get insurance at work, and that premiums have actually grown more slowly in
the individual market.
At least half of American realize they don’t have enough
information to understand the law (although it doesn’t prevent them from
voicing strong opinions about it). The uninformed are much less likely to know
that the health-care law provides tax credits to help low- and middle-income
Americans purchase private insurance coverage or that Obamacare bars insurers from denying coverage
to people who have preexisting conditions.
Twenty-three percent of Americans, for example, think the
law allows undocumented immigrants can get financial help to purchase health
insurance. (It doesn’t.) And a significant chunk of the public – thanks, Fox
News – still believes that the law calls for government “death panels” to
intervene in decisions about end-of-life care.
The Vox poll found that forty-two percent of Americans
think Obamacare has gotten more expensive over the past five years, when budget
estimates for the Affordable Care Act have consistently fallen since it became
a law. In April Congressional Budget Office 2014, it marked down its Obamacare cost
projection by more than $100 billion. Indeed, public ignorance about this
important new law, which has been endlessly discussed on media, strongly
suggests that the more information is available, the less people absorb.
This article appears in Mar 19-25, 2015.
