Less than a month before open enrollment on President Obama’s signature health-care reform begins, Americans are not so sure that it will benefit them in any way, a new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows.
A total of 44% of Americans polled said that Obamacare was a bad idea, 31% said that it was a good idea, according to the poll. A 52% majority of those polled said that health-care reform will increase costs.
Confusion about what is in the law plays at least a small role in the public’s negative perception—34% said they don’t understand the law very well, a slightly larger number, 35%, said they have “some” understanding of the law. The 30% of respondents who said they understood the law “very well” also had more positive opinions about Obamacare, 42% of them believed the law was a good idea versus 45% who said it was a bad idea.
The misinformation led some of those polled to say things such as, “There are death panels in there, and they’re going to decide whether people get treatment or not,” as one Republican-leaning woman told NBC News.
Of those with insurance who were polled, 73% said they were satisfied with their coverage.
The NBC/WSJ poll was conducted Sept. 5-8 of 1,000 adults (including 300 cell phone-only respondents), and it has an overall margin of error of plus-minus 3.1 percentage points.
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