A new phone survey has indicated that the majority of adults in the U.S. are undecided about their future coverage.
According to one of the latest studies conducted by Princeton Survey Research Associates International, the majority of Americans haven’t yet decided whether they will be purchasing health insurance in order to comply with the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate, or whether they would prefer to pay a penalty.
The poll also indicated that in May, there remained a considerable amount of confusion about individual requirements.
The team at Princeton Survey Research Associates contacted more than one thousand people in order to find out what decisions they had made regarding their purchase of health insurance before the January 1, 2014 deadline passes. What they discovered was that nearly two thirds had not yet decided.
The research indicated that much of the indecision stems from a lack of knowledge about the health insurance subsidies.
Most Americans who are currently uninsured now face the decision as to whether they would prefer to purchase health insurance coverage or whether they would prefer to pay a penalty that is either $95 or 1 percent of their annual household income (whichever is the greater amount). The research suggested that the indecision is based primarily on the fact that most of the people who have yet to choose don’t know whether or not they will qualify for the federal subsidies that would help to pay their premiums.
Among those who were surveyed and who are uninsured, approximately three in five said that they did not have health insurance because they couldn’t afford the premiums. Although the state exchanges will be up and running by October to allow residents to compare and purchase plans, Americans have yet to receive any details so that they remain primarily uninformed as to what they can expect in order to help them to make the right decisions for themselves and their families.
This supports the findings from a health insurance study in April, performed by the Kaiser Family Foundation, from a nonpartisan study they conducted that said that 42 percent of Americans weren’t even aware that the Affordable Care Act was still a law.
