AP-GfK poll: Health law seen as eroding coverage

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans who already have health insurance are blaming President Barack Obama's health care overhaul for their rising premiums and deductibles, and overall 3 in 4 say the rollout of coverage for the uninsured has gone poorly.

An Associated Press-GfK poll finds that health care remains politically charged going into next year's congressional elections. Keeping the refurbished HealthCare.gov website running smoothly is just one of Obama's challenges, maybe not the biggest.


The poll found a striking level of unease about the law among people who have health insurance and aren't looking for any more government help. Those are the 85 percent of Americans who the White House says don't have to be worried about the president's historic push to expand coverage for the uninsured.


In the survey, nearly half of those with job-based or other private coverage say their policies will be changing next year — mostly for the worse. Nearly 4 in 5 (77 percent) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act, even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law's passage.


Sixty-nine percent say their premiums will be going up, while 59 percent say annual deductibles or copayments are increasing.


Only 21 percent of those with private coverage said their plan is expanding to cover more types of medical care, though coverage of preventive care at no charge to the patient has been required by the law for the past couple of years.


Fourteen percent said coverage for spouses is being restricted or eliminated, and 11 percent said their plan is being discontinued.


"Rightly or wrongly, people with private insurance looking at next year are really worried about what is going to happen," said Robert Blendon, a professor at the Harvard School of Public Health, who tracks public opinion on health care issues. "The website is not the whole story."


Employers trying to control their health insurance bills have been shifting costs to workers for years, but now those changes are blamed increasingly on "Obamacare" instead of the economy or insurance companies.

http://news.yahoo.com/ap-gfk-poll-health-law-seen-eroding-coverage-131710274.html

Lots of unhappy voters....democrats are going to feel the wrath over it.
 
americans have short attention spans. that's the only problem with sticking it to obama. by november who knows what the fuck americans will be thinking about
 
americans have short attention spans. that's the only problem with sticking it to obama. by november who knows what the fuck americans will be thinking about

October, when open enrollment hits next year, we'll have a whole new round of cancellation notices. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
 
Wow 28 years and my premiums never went up till Obamacare.

Yup. I had no deductible, covered for everything, small co-pay, higher lifetime limit than they currently "offer"...

None of that any longer. Now I have a deductible as well as a higher copay and pay three times as much for this crappier coverage. What a great victory for the middle class. Overall we'll be paying well over $4,000 more per year for health care.
 
Nearly 4 in 5 (77 percent) blame the changes on the Affordable Care Act, even though the trend toward leaner coverage predates the law's passage.

The fact that 77% of the population was unaware of the dramatic changes in health insurance coverage that have been taking place for the last 10-15 years is not at all surprising to a sardonic cynic like myself. All this represents for me is another demonstration that most of the population haven't been paying attention, didn't know what the hell was happening and are still misdirecting their anger and angst. This health insurance reform act, which has little if anything to do with health care, is what happens when people believe that government is not involved in or should not be involved in economic issues while industry quietly writes law after law affecting the economic lives of every American citizen. The idea that the health insurance industry would write and sanction a law that would strip them of their profits, their power, or their privilege was ludicrous on its face, the idea that a centrist president from the Democratic Party was a socialist was even more ridiculous, and the idea that such a president could compromise with enough Republicans to get this thing passed and it would still be a boon to anyone but the health insurance industry was equally bizarre. It is doing what it was designed to do, boost profits for the industry that wrote it! Anyone who follows the stock market saw the stocks of health insurance companies rise should have realized this was not a win for the consumer. But the industry has been increasing premium costs and cutting coverage across the board for years. It's incredible that, according to this poll, fully 77% of the population didn't know that.
 
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