5 Years After ACA Enacted: Poll Examines Opinion on the Law
March marked 5 years since the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed into law. With the Supreme Court set to weigh in on the law in the case of King v. Burwell, the Kaiser Family Foundation presented results of a poll that reported public views on the law as well as the latest happening surrounding provisions of the ACA.
The foundation has been tracking public opinion of the law monthly for years and in March found that the gap between favorable and unfavorable views of the law reached the closest margin in more than 2 years. The poll indicated that 43% of respon- dents had an unfavorable view of the ACA, while 41% had a favorable view. Comparatively, in an April 2010 Kaiser poll, 46% of respondents said they had a favorable view, while 40% had an unfavorable one.
Among the 43% who had an unfavorable view of the law, the reasons included financial and cost considerations (26%), against individual mandate (18%), and government-related issues (6%).
Conversely, among the 41% with a favorable view, the reasons indicated included expanded access (61%), more affordable healthcare (10%), and country/ people will be better off in general (7%).
In terms of partisan support, 74% of Republicans had an unfavorable view of the law, while 65% of Democrats had a favorable view and 47% of Independents had an unfavorable view (compared with 37% favorable view for Independents).
Fifty-seven percent of the poll’s respondents said the healthcare law has not directly impacted their family; of the participants who said they have been impacted, 19% said the law has helped them, while 22% said it has hurt them.
At the time that the poll was conducted, the Supreme Court had heard oral arguments in the King v. Burwell case regarding the ACA. However, 53% of the respondents said they had heard “nothing at all” about the case, while 25% said they had heard “only a little,” and 22% said they had heard “some” about the case.
Of the respondents who had heard about the case, most felt that ruling against subsidies in the hearing would have an overall negative impact. Forty-six percent felt that it would have a negative impact on the country as a whole, 44% said it would negatively impact the uninsured population, 37% said it would negatively impact people receiving financial help from the government in order to purchase insurance, 29% said it would negatively impact their home state, and 13% said it would negatively affect their family.
In addition, the majority of respondents (69%) think that the states that could be impacted if the Supreme Court rules against subsidies should take action to create their own marketplace, including 58% of Republicans, 70% of Indepen- dents, and 82% of Democrats.
As for next steps for the ACA, 30% think the law should be repealed entirely, 23% think the law should be expanded further, 23% think that Congress should move forward with implementing the law as is, and 10% think the law should be scaled back.
This tax season marked the first time health insurance must be indicated on filings, though not all respondents were aware that this mandate went into effect; 53% of respondents were aware of the requirement for 2014 tax filings, while 20% thought it began next year for 2015 tax filings and 11% thought that the mandate went into affect last year with 2013 tax filings.
And, after the second year of open enrollment came to a close, 46% of the uninsured population said they did not have enough information to understand how the law impacts their family, while 62% said they have been without insur- ance for at least 2 years, according to the findings of the poll. An additional 59% said they expect to pay a fine for not having health coverage in 2014.
The poll included responses from 1503 adults ≥18 years of age living in all 50 states. The poll took place between March 6 and March 12 via computer-assisted telephone interviews conducted in both English and Spanish by the Princeton Data Source under the direction of the Princeton Survey Research Associates International.—Kerri Fitzgerald
