We’ve
known for a few months now that lots of people signed up for health
insurance this year in new marketplaces. A new survey shows that the
people who did so are also pretty happy with their purchases.
The survey, from the Commonwealth Fund,
a research group, came to similar conclusions as other surveys about
the expansion of health insurance. It found that about 15 percent of
adults younger than 65 now lack health insurance, down from 20 percent
before the Affordable Care Act rolled out in January.
What
was more surprising is that people who got the new coverage were
generally happy with the product. Overall, 73 percent of people who
bought health plans and 87 percent of those who signed up for Medicaid
said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their new health
insurance. Seventy-four percent of newly insured Republicans liked their
plans. Even 77 percent of people who had insurance before — including
members of the much-publicized group whose plans got canceled last year —
were happy with their new coverage.
Larry
Levitt, the senior vice president for special initiatives at the Kaiser
Family Foundation, another research group that polls on the Affordable
Care Act, said he wasn’t sure we’d see such high satisfaction so early.
The law’s requirement that Americans obtain insurance always made him
wonder whether people would be glad to have insurance if they felt forced to buy it.
“It’s possible people may have felt coerced into buying coverage, even
if they didn’t like it or didn’t feel it was a good value,” he said in
an email. “That doesn’t seem to be happening so far.”
The Commonwealth poll appears
to be the first national survey since the health-law passed to have
gone beyond questions about insurance status and asked about
satisfaction and usage.
The
survey also found that a majority of people are using their new
insurance. The survey found that 60 percent of the newly insured had
gone to a doctor or a hospital or filled a prescription with their new
plan. Of those, more than 60 percent said they wouldn’t have been able
to afford the care without their new coverage. Most people seeking new
primary care doctors found the process fairly easy and had to wait less
than two weeks for an appointment.
That
news, of course, can cut both ways. It may be a sign that the new plans
are working as intended by making it easy for people to have access to
affordable care. It may also be a sign that those newly insured people
are relatively sick and will be particularly expensive to insure.
Commonwealth found that about 70 percent of people using their plans had
a pre-existing health problem. It will take some time to see how costly
this new population turns out to be.
It’s
also early to know whether this happiness will last. You might expect
the first people to sign up for a new program to be those most
enthusiastic about its prospects to improve their life. But with
widespread coverage of complaints about high costs and limited networks
of doctors, the new study suggests that, among the early adopters, at
least, the benefits of coverage outweigh the problems.
There
is reason to think that the good feelings may linger. Americans may
complain about the details of their health insurance, but they are
generally happy with it once they have it. An Associated Press poll in
January found that 73 percent of all Americans with insurance before the
rollout of the law were satisfied.
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