The rollout of the health-care law has been troubled, to say the least. But are Americans turned off by what theyve heard? Not yet. Monday saw two new polls released on Obamacare. Both contain good news for the law. Here are the takeaways: - Obamacares as popular, or unpopular, as ever. Both the Washington Post/ABC News poll and the Pew poll found views of the law mostly unchanged. The Post poll, in fact, saw a slight uptick in support for the law, from 42 percent in September to 46 percent in October. - Make D.C. listen! For comparisons sake, that makes Obamacare significantly more popular than the Republican Party (32 percent) or the Tea Party (26 percent). It makes it a bit less popular than President Obama (50%) and exactly as popular as the Democratic Party (46 percent). - Americans are confused about whether the insurance exchanges are working. The Pew poll found that 46 percent of Americans know the online insurance portals arent working well. But 29 percent think theyre working fairly or very well. And 25 percent dont know. So a majority of Americans either dont know how the exchanges are working or think everything is going fine. Given that the exchanges are working quite badly, thats good news for the law. - People who use the exchanges like them. About one-in-seven Americans say they have tried using the exchanges. 56 percent found them easy to use. Three out of five people whove tried the exchanges were just curious about them. - The uninsured want insurance. 65 percent of the uninsured say they plan to get insurance within the next six months. Those numbers are reflected in the visits to HealthCare.gov: Among the insured, 12 percent have visited the exchanges, and 19 percent plan to. Among the uninsured, 22 percent have visited the exchanges and 42 percent plan to. Thats great news for the law. Its much easier to sign up people who want insurance than to sign up people who dont. - A majority want the law to keep going. Obviously the 46 percent who approve of Obamacare in the Washington Post/ABC News poll want to see it implemented. But so do many of those who disapprove of the law. The result is that 66 percent want to see the law implemented. This is, of course, just a snapshot in time. Its possible, and perhaps even probable, that with the shutdown over and attention refocusing on the law the public will grow more dismayed over the technical problems. Or perhaps the problems will abate -- its already much easier to get into the web site than it was two weeks ago -- and the laws poll numbers will rise. That just underscores the reality that what matters for the law isnt messaging or the early polls. Its whether and when it begins working for people. If that date is a week or two from now, Obamacare is likely fine and the troubled first weeks will fade into the background, becoming a story CMS employees tell around the campfire to scare children. If it stretches beyond a month, Obamacares prospects are dicier.
Posted on: Tue, 22 Oct 2013 12:27:04 +0000
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