Young Adults, Low Income Least Familiar with Healthcare Reform

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) —
Low-income U.S. adults and those age 30 and younger — two key groups targeted by the Affordable Care Act — are the least familiar with it, a survey says.

The new healthcare law’s success will rest at least partially on young Americans’ enrollment rates since they are the age group least likely to be insured by their employers, but younger Americans are significantly less acquainted with the law than those who are older.

The Affordable Care Act is intended to benefit those with lower incomes, who are more likely to be uninsured than those with higher incomes. But at this time, lower-income Americans are less familiar with the law than those with higher incomes.

Overall, familiarity with the healthcare law is up only slightly from late summer and October, with 72 percent now saying they are at least somewhat familiar with the law and 28 percent saying they are not.

The majority of those now familiar with the law said they were somewhat familiar with the law perhaps not a surprising finding given the law’s complexity and that many of its features are still being rolled out, Gallup said.

Although the Affordable Care Act originated with a Democratic president and was passed by a Democratically-controlled Congress in 2010, Republicans are significantly more familiar with it than are Democrats, the survey found.

The Gallup telephone poll of 1,034 U.S. adults was conducted Nov. 23-24 as part of the Gallup Daily tracking survey. It has a margin of error of 4 percentage points.