Bipartisan Support for Exchanges Could Help Lawmakers With ACA Implementation

With the implementation of the Affordable Care Act picking up nationwide, a majority of U.S. residents — who identify themselves as Democrats or Republicans — said they consider the creation of health insurance exchanges under the ACA the top health policy priority for their state moving forward, according to a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation.

KFF collaborated with the Harvard School of Public Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on the poll, which surveyed a nationally representative random sample of 1,347 adults earlier this month.

At a briefing to discuss the poll on Thursday, the report’s authors said the findings could create an opportunity — or “wiggle room” — for lawmakers to strengthen public support for the implementation of the ACA.

KFF President and CEO Drew Altman noted that the exchanges — along with other ACA provisions, including coverage benefits for young adults and individuals with pre-existing conditions — have elements that liberals and conservatives agree on. However, “reason itself has been eclipsed by ideology” in the debate over ACA, which is now the  “symbol of the largest partisan divide in the country,” Altman noted.

Mollyann Brodie — senior vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at KFF — noted that the survey’s “rare bipartisanship” finding is plausible because the survey did not tie the exchanges to the ACA’s alternative moniker,  “Obamacare.” Instead, the survey used the term “exchange” or “marketplace,” which does not elicit the same “sour reaction” from Republicans as the term Obamacare has tended to, Brodie said.

Brodie suggested that the survey’s “take home point” is the need to depoliticize the implementation of certain ACA provisions, which could boost “agreement … on how to transform the health care system.” For example, HHS last week officially rebranded health exchanges as marketplaces, she noted.

By Hanna Jaquith, Staff Writer

[Ed. Note: For more coverage on the new Kaiser survey, check out American Health Line tomorrow morning. For a roundup of notable quotes from Thursday’s briefing, click here.]