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The tug of war for public opinion on health reform continues this month, with approval and disapproval remaining in the same relatively narrow band each has occupied since passage even as favorable views regain a small upper hand, 49 percent favorable vs. 40 percent unfavorable.
Confusion over the new health reform law declined but remains widespread, with 44 percent of the public saying they were confused in May, compared to 55 percent in April.
This month’s Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, conducted during the four days following the mid-term election, asked voters in an open-ended question to name in their own words the biggest factors influencing their vote for Congress, and found that health care was a factor, but not a dominant one.
Personal experiences with the health care system are a key factor in Americans’ opinions on how the health care system should function and their expectations of how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will change the system when fully implemented.
After taking a negative turn in October, the public’s overall views on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) returned to a more mixed status this month. Still, Americans remain somewhat more likely to have an unfavorable view of the law (44 percent) than a favorable one (37 percent).
Overall public opinion on the health reform law remains unchanged this month, with 42 percent of Americans holding a favorable view and 43 percent an unfavorable view.
Though the public remains divided on health reform overall, according to a new survey jointly conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard School of Public Health, opposition to the new law ticked upward in January from 41 percent to 50 percent as Republicans ramped up efforts to repeal it.
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.
In the latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, nearly half of Americans say they are confused about the status of the health reform law.
The August Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that even though 32 million uninsured Americans will gain health insurance under the ACA, only about half of non-elderly Americans currently without coverage say they are familiar with the chief components in the law designed to achieve this goal.
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