government
Public: Don’t know much about ACA
NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted May 13, 2013
A Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll found that many Americans are still confused and misinformed about the provisions of the Affordable Care Act.
Four in 10 adults didn’t know that the ACA was still in effect, and nearly half said they didn’t understand how it would affect their families because they didn’t have enough information, “a proportion that rises to 56% among those nonelderly living in low-income households and 58% among the uninsured,” the survey said. Hispanics were the population most likely to report a lack of information about the ACA.
Twelve percent of respondents mistakenly thought that Congress had repealed the law, whereas 7% had the false assumption that the U.S. Supreme Court had invalidated it.
People appear to be getting most of their information about the law from their own social networks or news outlets. Forty percent of respondents cited friends and relatives as their chief resources for the ACA, followed by radio, newspapers or online news sources (36%), and cable news (30%). Only 11% said they were getting their information from a physician. State Medicaid offices or health departments ranked last at 8%. The report reflects data from two separate foundation surveys of 1,203 adults and 1,002 adults.
