While many Republicans in Congress and on the campaign trail vilify the Affordable Care Act, American voters across the country are not particularly focused on the health care law as they think about the upcoming presidential election.
An analysis of data from the latest monthly Kaiser Health Tracking Poll finds that the ACA ranks eighth on the list of issues voters are most likely to cite as extremely important to their vote.
Terrorism (38%) and the economy and jobs (34%) are the issues that voters are most likely to say will be extremely important to their presidential vote. These are followed by the personal cost of health care and health insurance, which 28 percent of voters describe as extremely important to their vote.
Other key issues identified by voters were dissatisfaction with government (28%), the federal budget deficit (28%), gun control (27%) and the situation in Iraq and Syria (26%).
The 2010 health care law was cited as extremely important by 23% of voters, the same percentage as immigration. Next were taxes (22%), race relations (20%) and climate change (16%).
When asked to choose the single most important issue to their vote, just 4% of voters chose the ACA, ranking behind the economy (12%) and terrorism (10%), dissatisfaction with government (9%), gun control (7%), the cost of their health care (6%), climate change (5%), and tied with immigration (4%) and the federal budget deficit (4%).
The survey found that overall public opinion on the law did not change significantly this month and is closely split, with 44% holding an unfavorable view and 41% holding a favorable one.
When working-age adults with health insurance were asked about their experience with their plans, the vast majority (87%) said they were "very" or "somewhat" satisfied with the choice of doctors in their plan's network, whole only 4% said they were “very dissatisfied."
Among this group, one in eight (12%) said they had to change doctors in the past 12 months because their doctor wasn’t covered by their health insurance plan. This includes 5% who said the change was a big problem for them, 5% who said it was a small problem, and 1% who said it was not a problem.
The survey found that people who remain uninsured are largely disengaged from the ongoing ACA enrollment process.
Most of those without health insurance said they have not been contacted about signing up for coverage (67%) or that they have not tried to get more information on their own (57%). Most also said they have not taken steps in the past six months to figure out if they are eligible for either Medicaid (72%) or financial assistance to purchase health insurance through the healthcare marketplaces (79%).
At the same time, two-thirds (65%) said they plan to get health insurance in the next few months, even though nearly half (46%) said they have been without coverage for at least the past two years.
The poll was conducted from Jan. 13 to 19 among a nationally representative random sample of 1,204. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full sample. For results based on subgroups, the margin of sampling error may be higher.