Kaiser Survey Says, “People like ObamaCare” (ish)

A recent survey from KFF.org shows that people like their non-group insurance under ObamaCare. This includes all ACA-compliant insurance purchased outside the Marketplace and insurance obtained through the Health Insurance Marketplace with or without cost assistance.

Highlights from the Study

The findings are pretty remarkable showing:

• Republicans are more likely to dislike their insurance then independents or democrats.
• More people are benefiting from plan costs under the ACA then not.
• People tend to feel better about higher premium low deductible plans (although as a side-note the math can make the actual value of a high deductible plan better… but of course this is about perception not number crunching.)
• The only thing people like less than ACA-compliant plans are plans that aren’t ACA compliant, but people with non-compliant plans are actually less apt to complain about cost sharing.

Our Conclusion

What we pull from this data is that although people are happy with premium costs and having coverage under the ACA, no one is thrilled about the high deductibles and lackluster cost sharing… and why would they be? One of the ways insurers are keeping premiums “affordable” is by covering very little before deductibles.

Before the ACA some people had affordable premiums and affordable cost sharing while others were dying in the street because they had hay fever when they were three. Today everyone has access to coverage and premiums are affordable (although about 20% of people are paying a little more). The big change under the ACA is that since insurers can’t cut corners anymore they have responded by covering very little in regards to cost sharing on most plans. The ACA limits maximums, but one can in many cases expect to pay for most care out of pocket under the ACA and it’s hard to say people expected this unless they understood how insurance worked.

The high deductible stuff is good in a way, it makes people shop around for care and makes people care about what they are paying (and that needs to happen)… but it’s bad in a way because most on high deductible plans simply pay into an insurance fund, but only ever benefit from the catastrophic coverage and free preventive services. This may make economic sense in the long term, but it’s hard to really feel good about those high deductibles and high costs and that is what this survey is looking at, feelings.

One thing is for sure though, despite all of this people are pretty darn happy to have access to coverage, well at least not-Republicans are.

Read the Survey

Of course there is a lot more than that, and instead of reprinting the whole piece why not give the Kaiser Family Foundation some love and go check out their findings here.