About one in 10 Americans -- 9% -- say The Affordable Care Act has improved their health insurance situation in the past year, according to a new survey by Bankrate.com.
The telephone survey asked a representative sample of 1,001 Americans about their knowledge of and feelings about the law that mandates health care insurances for all Americans in coming years.
The survey was conducted from Oct. 17 to 20 after a 16-day federal government shutdown over raising the debt limit ended and the bungled launching of health exchange websites nationwide.
In fact, 38% of uninsured Americans said they feel more negative about the three-year-old law than they did the past year. And 47% of the uninsured say they don't even know where to turn for information on the act. Uninsured Americans make up about 15% of the population.
Doug Whiteman, a Bankrate.com insurance analyst, says the numbers show the government outreach efforts haven't gone far enough.
"It is discouraging that there is so much pessimism (around Obamacare)," he said. "The law is over three years old and so many people aren't getting the information."
Health exchange navigators in some states can make the process easier for consumers, says Eric Johnson, the Norman Eig Chair of Business at Columbia University. But not every state has embraced the law; in fact 26 don't have state marketplaces. In states like Florida, uninsured citizens don't have health exchange navigators to guide them through the nuances of the law, he said.
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