Obamacare violates 'keep it simple, stupid' rule of thumb
Americans too confused by healthcare act to like it, survey finds
By Karen Kaplan
Los Angeles Times
1:45 PM PDT, October 26, 2012
Mitt Romney may be a little fuzzy on the details of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – as he and others call it, Obamacare – but a new survey finds he’s got plenty of company.
Researchers quizzed more than 2,600 Americans about 12 aspects of the health reform law. Not only did they have to say whether the provision was really in the law (after all, they’d have a 50-50 chance of guessing the correct answer), they also had to say how certain they were that their answer was correct.
Of the 12 provisions on the quiz, in only one case did a majority of survey-takers identify it as real with a high degree of certainty. But even that requirement – that children under the age of 26 can be covered under their parents’ health insurance policies – was correctly identified only 52% of the time.
The survey found that only 39% of people were sure that Obamacare requires large employers to provide health insurance to their workers; only 33% realized that the law requires insurers to cover people even if they have preexisting conditions; and only 24% were confident that insurers were prohibited from placing limits on coverage for patients’ healthcare costs, among other things.
Americans were just as confused about what WASN’T in the law, the research team found. For instance, only 17% of those surveyed were confident that the law did not contain death panels (of the sort so often mentioned by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin). Only 11% recognized with certainty that there is no provision that lets people who are in the country illegally to get treatment for free, and all but 14% thought the law might require smokers to pay an extra $1,000 per year.
(More here.)
By Karen Kaplan
Los Angeles Times
1:45 PM PDT, October 26, 2012
Mitt Romney may be a little fuzzy on the details of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act – as he and others call it, Obamacare – but a new survey finds he’s got plenty of company.
Researchers quizzed more than 2,600 Americans about 12 aspects of the health reform law. Not only did they have to say whether the provision was really in the law (after all, they’d have a 50-50 chance of guessing the correct answer), they also had to say how certain they were that their answer was correct.
Of the 12 provisions on the quiz, in only one case did a majority of survey-takers identify it as real with a high degree of certainty. But even that requirement – that children under the age of 26 can be covered under their parents’ health insurance policies – was correctly identified only 52% of the time.
The survey found that only 39% of people were sure that Obamacare requires large employers to provide health insurance to their workers; only 33% realized that the law requires insurers to cover people even if they have preexisting conditions; and only 24% were confident that insurers were prohibited from placing limits on coverage for patients’ healthcare costs, among other things.
Americans were just as confused about what WASN’T in the law, the research team found. For instance, only 17% of those surveyed were confident that the law did not contain death panels (of the sort so often mentioned by former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin). Only 11% recognized with certainty that there is no provision that lets people who are in the country illegally to get treatment for free, and all but 14% thought the law might require smokers to pay an extra $1,000 per year.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
The Congress that passed the health reform act didn't even read the bill. Who can blame them? When you have $10K per plate fundraisers to attend, who has time to read a 3000 page bill. And they expect us - the citizen - to fall in line??? It's tyranny by volume.
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