Covered California, the state Obamacare exchange, is “working well,” more than half of residents polled say.
The Affordable Care Act itself gets passing marks from just under half of Californians polled by the most recent Public Policy Institute of California Survey. It was the first major poll conducted in-state since open enrollment for private health insurance closed at the end of March.
When asked about performance of the state health insurance exchange, 54 percent of those polled said it was performing “very well” or “fairly well,” up strongly from the previous poll’s number (46 percent). Thirty-five percent said it was not working well.
Covered California saw an embarrassing and disruptive outage of its online enrollment system in February, but its woes have been relatively insignificant in comparison with the federal Obamacare web site. The California operation was swamped in the final days of open enrollment, but officials extended the deadline for those who experienced technical problems while trying to sign up.
Not surprisingly, those who indicated Covered California was doing a good job tended to be Democrats — with seven out of 10 respondents giving a thumbs up. About half of Republicans said the state Obamacare operation was functioning well.
Younger people tended to grade Covered California higher than older respondents. Sixty-five percent of those ages 18 to 34 said they liked what the exchange was doing.
As for health reform in general, 48 percent viewed it favorably while 46 percent did not. Those percentages are about the same as in December, before the Obamacare coverage went into effect.
The pollsters said: “Opinion (about Obamacare in California) has remained relatively unchanged since we began asking this question in December 2013 (44% generally favorable, 44% generally unfavorable). We asked a similar question before December 2013, and about half of Californians expressed support.”
Adults nationwide appeared to have lower opinions of Obamacare than those who live in California, the pollsters reported.
Those with college degrees tended to approve of Obamacare in Califoria, while those without health insurance did not.
The PPIC survey collected responses of 1,702 adult residents throughout California, interviewed in English or Spanish by landline or cell phone.
Read the latest PPIC Statewide Survey.
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