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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (70330)	4/29/2014 11:32:09 AM
From: TimF	Respond to of 71588

The enrollment surge at the end of March in the health insurance exchanges, created by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), was widely covered in the news, as was the announcement that at least 8 million people have used the new marketplaces to sign up for coverage. The news got a fair amount of attention from the public, with over half saying they followed the enrollment numbers “very” or “fairly closely.” But the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that this news did little to change the public’s impressions of the law, with overall opinion remaining exactly where it was last month (46 percent unfavorable, 38 percent favorable). While over four in ten correctly identify the number of people who have signed up for insurance1, enrollment levels do not register as a success for most Americans. Nearly six in ten (including half of those who correctly identified the 8 million figure) believe enrollment fell short of the government’s expectations, and the same share believe the rollout problems indicate that the law is not working as planned. Still, more want the government to give the law a chance than want to scrap it and start over; nearly six in ten would prefer their representative in Congress work to improve the law, while just over a third want them to repeal and replace it. When asked why they haven’t gotten coverage yet this year, over a third of the uninsured say they tried to get coverage but it was too expensive, while smaller shares say they didn’t know about the ACA’s requirement to have insurance or didn’t think it applied to them. Just 7 percent of the uninsured say they would rather pay the fine than pay for coverage. This month’s tracking poll also finds public support for the ACA’s requirement that private health insurance plans cover the full cost of birth control, including a majority who believe that for-profit companies should be subject to this requirement even if their owners object to birth control on religious grounds. Overall opinion remains unchanged from March Despite the announcement that at least 8 million people have signed up for health insurance through the ACA’s new marketplace, overall favorability of the law remains exactly where it was in last month’s tracking poll, with 46 percent of the public saying they have an unfavorable view and 38 percent a favorable view. This is a slight improvement over polls taken from November through January, but still represents a more negative tilt to opinion than was measured in Kaiser tracking surveys before the troubled launch of the exchanges last October. kff.org Obama’s approval rating fell to 41 percent, down from 46 percent through the first three months of the year and the lowest of his presidency in Post-ABC News polls. Just 42 percent approve of his handling of the economy, 37 percent approve of how he is handling the implementation of the Affordable Care Act and 34 percent approve of his handling of the situation involving Ukraine and Russia. washingtonpost.com