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  • The ACA and Fluoridation: The Power of Political Symbols

    Perspective

    In the 1950s, water fluoridation became a public health controversy that morphed into a symbolic issue of larger proportions. For its opponents, fluoridation came to symbolize big government and even for some, a communist threat. The controversy became so odd that it was parodied in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film “Dr. Strangelove,” in which General Jack Ripper starts a nuclear war to stop a communist plot to “sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids”…

  • March Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: The ACA at Two Years; The Individual Mandate and the Supreme Court

    Perspective

    As the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) nears its second birthday, the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that public opinion on the law remains evenly split (41 percent favorable, 40 percent unfavorable) with sharp divisions along partisan lines, much as it has been since the law was passed. With the Supreme Court preparing to hear challenges to the law later this month, about half the public thinks the Court should strike down the…

  • Health Insurance Transparency under the Affordable Care Act

    Perspective

    In February, a final rule was issued implementing the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requirement that all health plans provide a uniform summary of coverage for all enrollees and applicants. The idea of providing easy-to-understand summaries of coverage is, in fact, the most popular provision in the ACA, according to a recent Kaiser tracking poll. That finding suggests powerful consumer frustration over the complexity of health insurance and the difficulty people face evaluating health insurance choices and understanding…

  • KFF February Health Tracking Poll: Nearly Half Confused About Status of the Health Reform Law

    Perspective

    The latest Kaiser Health Tracking poll finds that amid a public debate about contraceptive coverage in insurance plans, 63 percent of Americans support a new federal requirement that plans include no-cost birth control, while a third oppose it. Catholics split along similar lines, but there’s a big partisan divide, including among women: 85 percent of women who are Democrats support the requirement, compared with 42 percent of women who are Republicans. The public is also divided…

  • Private Insurance Benefits and Cost-Sharing Under the ACA

    Perspective

    The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently released guidance on the two key components that determine the level of protection that private insurance plans will provide to consumers under health reform. The first involves the services that insurance plans must cover, and the second involves how much patients must pay out-of-pocket for those services. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) establishes new rules for what insurers must provide for both components starting in 2014.…

  • Insurance Coverage of Contraceptives

    Perspective

    In this post, we answer some of the key questions about the new contraceptive coverage policy generally, and more specifically, how it will be applied to religious organizations.

  • January 2012 Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: The ACA and the Supreme Court

    Perspective

    As the Supreme Court prepares to hear legal challenges to the health reform law in March, the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll shows that most Americans (59 percent) expect the Justices to base their ruling on their own ideological views rather than their interpretation of the law (28 percent). As for the public’s views on the individual mandate, the poll once again shows that it continues to be unpopular with the public (67 percent unfavorable versus…

  • Betting on Private Insurers

    Perspective

    Just-released estimates of national health spending in 2010 by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) show that 45% of our health care spending is financed by the federal and state governments, primarily through the Medicare and Medicaid programs. This share has grown temporarily in recent years because of the economic downturn, as private insurance has declined and Medicaid has grown. It has also increased due to our demographic destiny: the growing cohort of baby…

  • December Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: Public Again Divided on ACA, Independents Polarized, and Exchanges Widely Popular

    Perspective

    According to the December Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, the October downturn in the share of Americans with a favorable view of the health reform law has been fully reversed in December and overall opinion on the law returned to the roughly even split seen for most of 2011. Forty-three percent of Americans expressed unfavorable views of the law in December, while 41 percent had favorable views. Partisan divisions persist and the findings suggest not only…

  • Pulling It Together: Bono, Jon Stewart and the HIV/AIDS Message

    Perspective

    One of the most interesting conversations on a health topic happened recently on The Daily Show between Bono and Jon Stewart. Bono told Stewart that we were "at the beginning of the end of the AIDS epidemic," promising an announcement the next day that would explain how a combination of early treatment, treatment for pregnant women, and circumcision, would turn the epidemic around if the American people would continue to put money into the cause.…