The Kaiser Family Foundation's latest tracking poll has a somewhat surprising finding: Nearly half of the uninsured don't know the Affordable Care Act will help them.
About half of the uninsured (47%) don't think they will be affected much at all by the ACA, either positively or negatively. Fourteen percent think it will affect them negatively (their main reason is that they are worried about being forced to buy insurance they cannot afford). We know from survey after survey that the uninsured want insurance coverage. And we know that the main reason they don’t have it is that they cannot afford it. Experts who have advocated for expanded coverage for decades probably envision the uninsured sitting around the kitchen table anxiously awaiting the implementation of coverage expansions under the ACA. But surprisingly, only three in ten of the uninsured say the ACA will help them get health care.[...]
What’s going on here? For starters, most people who are uninsured are very busy supporting their families and getting through the day, and they simply do not know much about the ACA, at least not yet. Nearly half (48% of the uninsured) do not know about the tax credits low- and moderate-income people will get under the ACA (including 41% who not only did not know, but incorrectly said, that the law does not provide tax credits). And 53 percent did not know about the Medicaid expansion, which covers low-income adults regardless of whether they have children (including 37% who said that the law does not expand Medicaid).
This points to what is probably the biggest political problem built in to the new law—the time lag before implementation. From the poll's findings [pdf], awareness of the ways in which the law will benefit all people, but especially the uninsured, has fallen off dramatically since the law was passed.
As news coverage has focused less on the health reform law and more on the nation’s ailing economy and the federal debt and deficit, the share of Americans who are aware that the ACA includes subsidies for low and moderate income Americans without health insurance fell from 72 percent last December to 58 percent this month. Similarly, the share who are aware that the law expands Medicaid fell from 62 to 49 percent.
On another health care in the news note, Kaiser asked respondents about the new decision by the Department of Health and Human Services to require health insurance plans to pay for the full cost of birth control. Guess which is the only group which doesn't have majority support for the decision?
You got it, Republicans. Even Republican women only have 50 percent support for it, but Republican men really fail here. (Hardly a surprise.)