July 08, 2012
A NYT piece on another possible round of court battles over the Affordable Care Act (ACA) told readers:
“White House officials have repeatedly underestimated opposition to the health care law. They predicted that public support for the law would grow as people learned more about it.”
This implies that people have learned about the ACA. That does not appear to be the case. According to poll conducted last fall by Kaiser only 45 percent of people knew that the ACA did not create panels that would make decisions about end of life care for Medicare patients. Only 25 percent knew that the bill did not require firms with less than 50 employees to provide insurance for their workers. Only 42 percent knew that the bill does not provide insurance to undocumented workers.
In short, the evidence suggests that the media has done a very poor job in educating the public about the specifics of the plan. (Michelle Rhee would fire all the reporters immediately.) We do not know how people will respond if they learn more about the ACA because this far they have not.
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