Abstract
We ask whether including information about the level of government and policy actor involved affects public opinion on health insurance requirements. To answer this question, we examine data from a question wording experiment embedded in a nationally representative telephone survey (n=906) that randomized whether a health insurance requirement was presented as a federal or state requirement and as being signed by a specific leader (President Barack Obama for the federal requirement or former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney for the state requirement). For the sample as a whole we found no statistically significant differences in support across the different versions, suggesting that the state/federal distinction may be unimportant to citizens. We also found that associating Obama with the federal requirement moved opinion among Democrats whereas ass
Highlights
The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 (ACA) was marked by substantial controversy around the extent to which government can and should place requirements (i.e., “mandates”) on citizens to obtain health insurance
We examine how varying the level of government and the actor associated with the policy (Obama or Romney) influences support for health insurance requirements not among only the general public and among three partisan subgroups: Democrats, independents, and Republicans [5,6]
We set out to examine the extent to which public opinion on health insurance requirements depends on the level of government and political leader, if any, associated with them
Summary
The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2010 (ACA) was marked by substantial controversy around the extent to which government can and should place requirements (i.e., “mandates”) on citizens to obtain health insurance. Less clear is how the members of the general public and specific partisan audiences responded to the distinction between federal and state requirements or how they responded to such requirements when associated with their principle political architects, Obama and Romney.
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