Princeton sociology professor and health care watcher Paul Starr says part of the problem is that so much of the law hasn’t taken effect yet. “They’re only really going to become aware of the specifics of the legislation as we get close to the point where there’s enrollment in health plans and where people actually see how the health insurance exchanges actually work and how the subsidies work,” he says.<\/p>\n
And there’s another big factor in the the lack of support \u2014 a lot of people who might like the law misunderstand what it actually requires.<\/p>\n
For example, in a March 2011 poll, Kaiser (like most other groups polling on the subject) found that two-thirds of respondents said they opposed the individual mandate. But when it was explained that in most cases simply having employer-provided insurance would satisfy that requirement and that most employers were expected to continue to provide such coverage, opposition dropped to 35 percent.<\/p>\n
“Probably 95 percent of the voting public either meet the individual requirement or are exempt from it,” says Chris Jennings, a former health aide to President Bill Clinton and a supporter of the new law. “Why aren’t these messages coming through better than they obviously are?”<\/p>\n
It probably doesn’t help that the Obama administration has been spending more effort trying to put the law into effect than working to dispel some of the myths about it.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think that was our primary job,” says Nancy-Ann DeParle, White House deputy chief of staff and one of the key administration architects of the health law. “I really think our primary job was making sure that the changes that are happening to our insurance system were implemented in a careful, deliberate, transparent fashion.”<\/p>\n
DeParle blames the misperceptions \u2014 particularly about the pivotal individual mandate \u2014 on the law’s many political opponents. She says, “The fact is for the vast majority of Americans they’ll just check a box that says, ‘Yes, I have insurance.’ ”<\/p>\n