ObamaCare Woes

Elise Viebeck writes at The Hill:

Anxious Democrats fear a botched implementation of ObamaCare could dash their hopes of controlling the House and Senate for President Obama’s last two years in office.

At his press conference Tuesday, Obama acknowledged “glitches and bumps” in the law’s rollout, but some congressional Democrats fear much worse.

One high-ranking Democrat told The Hill that it is his leading concern.

“The White House is going to have to step up its game,” the lawmaker said. “The Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent success … The White House is going to need to understand that.”

The Democratic legislator said the White House has focused on implementation with the assumption that consumers will come to understand the law with time.

“I have a different view,” he said, acknowledging a “significant disconnect” in the public’s understanding of the Affordable Care Act.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has a new poll confirming the legislator's concerns:

The April poll finds much of the public remains confused about the status of the law. The April poll provides a rough baseline of public awareness of the ACA before more intensive consumer information and consumer assistance efforts begin. Kaiser will track public awareness, including awareness among the uninsured, as implementation unfolds.

Among the key findings of the new poll:

• Four in ten Americans (42%) are unaware that the ACA is still the law of the land, including 12 percent who believe the law has been repealed by Congress, 7 percent who believe it has been overturned by the Supreme Court and 23 percent who say they don’t know enough to say what the status of the law is.
• About half the public (49%) says they do not have enough information about the health reform law to understand how it will impact their own family.
• The share of the public who says they lack enough information to understand how the ACA will affect their family is higher among two groups the law is likely to benefit most – the uninsured (58% of whom say they lack enough information) and low-income households (56% say so).
• When it comes to where they are getting information about the law, Americans most commonly cite friends and family (named by 40%), “newspapers, radio news or other online news sources” (36%), and cable news (30%). About one in ten report getting information from a health insurer, a doctor, an employer, or a non-profit organization. Similar shares say they have gotten information from “federal agencies such as the Department of Health and Human Services” (9%) or “state agencies such as your state Medicaid office or health department” (8%).