New Public Opinion Poll Shows Less Confusion Around Reform

A recent poll released by Kaiser Family Foundation in May found that those using the phrase “confused” to describe their feelings about the care health care legislation declined from 55% to 44% of respondents from April to May.  This is a significant decline found by a scientific, nationally representative poll.   Although these numbers show an improvement that hopefully continues moving forward, the fact that 44% of the general public remains confused on the subject proves that education around health care reform can by no means cease. 

One other interesting finding in the poll is that while people claimed to be less confused about the legislation, there were no marked increases when asked where (cable news, network TV, blogs, newspapers, etc.) they are receiving their information.  This could be the result of a few different factors, one of which being that the news they are receiving is more substantive now that the legislation has passed.  For example, cable news coverage at this point is arguably not as much about the “horse race” politics of the health care debate as it was during the height of the back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans. 

However, another possible (and in my opinion more likely) explanation of this finding could be that all of the misinformation perpetuated during the debate by many legislators and organizations was actually serving to confuse people rather than to educate them about the content of the bill.  If this is the case, this is a troubling reality that describes the current state of American politics. Since you could definitely make the argument that overall coverage about the debate and content of health care reform has declined, in this scenario people are actually feeling less confused about the bill simply because they are hearing less about it. 

This could be indicative of discussions around other issues as well if we don’t experience a change in how the two parties communicate with the public and what the media chooses to report on during these debates.  I think almost all Americans can agree that the public would have been much better served during the course of the health care debate with more educational information rather than coverage of the fervor both for and against reform.  My personal belief is that as people continue learning about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act there will be an even larger number that support the law.  Regardless of whether more people would come down as being supportive or not, what is unacceptable is that in an age with a wealth of information available at our fingertips, there are still millions of Americans that feel their questions haven’t been answered because of how we chose to talk about this historic legislation.

Click here to access the Kaiser Poll and a summary of its findings.