Many Americans despise the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA), but large majorities support almost every PPACA provision that pollsters ask about.
A team of researchers led by Mollyann Brodie of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, Menlo Park, Calif., has reported that finding in a summary of results from the foundation's latest health tracking poll.
The November telephone survey sample included 1,209 U.S. adults ages 18 and older, including 285 cellular telephone users who had no land lines.
The researchers found that 44% of the survey participants said they have an unfavorable opinion of PPACA and 37% have a favorable opinion.
The researchers found that unfavorable-to-favorable ratio has narrowed from 51% to 34% in October but widened from 42% to 40% in November 2010.
But the researchers found many participants who dislike the act would like to see it broadened: only 39% said they want to see PPACA repealed or replaced with a Republican alternative; 50% said they want to see the act left intact.
Just 35% of all participants, 53% of Democratic participants and 17% of the Republican participants favor the PPACA provision that would require many individuals to own health coverage or pay a penalty.
But the researchers found that at least 53% of all survey participants and at least 68% of Democratic participants said they favor all other provisions the pollsters asked about, such as a requirement that employers over a minimum size offer coverage or pay a penalty, and the Republican participants said they favor a total of eight of the 15 PPACA elements that were described.
About 51% of the Republican participants said they support the idea of health insurance ratereview programs, for example, and 76% said they think health plans should have to provide easy-to-understand plan summaries. About 73% said they like the idea of offering small business health insurance tax credits.
Only 38% of all survey participants said they knew PPACA requires health insurers to spend a minimum percentage of premiums on health care, but 60% said they support the idea of imposing minimum medical loss ratio requirements, the researchers report.
The researchers found that survey participants were unaware of many PPACA elements that appear to be popular, and that participants who have seen news coverage of the act believe the coverage has mostly been negative or neutral.
"Individuals' own views of the law do not appear to impact their assessment of the general tone of news coverage," the researchers say. "Those with favorable views are just as likely as those with unfavorable views to say the coverage they've seen has been mostly negative or evenly balanced, and few in either group see it as mostly positive."
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