Most Americans mistakenly believe the health reform law's insurance exchanges missed target enrollment numbers set by the government, according to poll results from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Only 14 percent of Americans correctly answered that enrollment figures exceeded government expectations — 8 million have signed up so far, topping the Congressional Budget Office's initial projection of 7 million enrollments in the first year.
Fifty-seven percent of Americans said the number of people signing up for coverage in the first open enrollment period fell short of the government's expectations, 21 percent said the number met expectations and 8 percent said they did not know and/or refused to answer.
Interestingly, even though most people do not think the enrollment numbers exceeded the goal, the majority (43 percent) of Americans polled knew how many people have signed up in the exchanges so far, answering about 8 million. "Even among those who correctly identified the fact that 8 million people have signed up so far, roughly half believe enrollment fell short of expectations," according to the poll results. Further, 14 percent said about 3 million had enrolled and 12 percent said about 500,000.
The poll asked Americans to describe their view on the law's implementation so far based on what they know about the first open enrollment period. Fifty-seven percent said "there have been so many problems since the law's rollout that it's clear the law is not working as planned," while 38 percent said "there were some early problems that have been fixed, and not the law is basically working as intended."
Despite the stance that the law is not working, most (58 percent) of Americans want Congress to work to improve the law compared with the 35 percent who want Congress to repeal and replace the law.
The survey was conducted April 15-21 among a nationally representative telephone sample of 1,504 adults ages 18 and older, living in the United States.
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