Health Care Focus Groups, Cleveland and Orlando, Feb. 16 & 17, 2015
Comments from participants in two groups of swing voters in federal exchange states:
- ObamaCare has made my insurance much more expensive.
- Health insurance is more expensive at least partly because I have to buy so many expensive benefits I don’t want or need.
- Because of ObamaCare’s rules, I wasn’t able to keep the insurance I had that worked for me and my family.
- A lot of people have lost their doctor, they have fewer choices of plans, and lower quality of care.
- People have to jump through too many complex hoops to get ObamaCare insurance. And then you get a policy and the deductibles are so high, you might as well not have insurance.
- ObamaCare a huge piece of legislation and it is so complex that no one can understand it.
- It has helped people who couldn’t get insurance before, but it has hurt a lot of people in the process.
- We don’t know anyone who has benefitted from the law and are skeptical about claims that ACA is working and whether the numbers they report are real.
- There have been a lot of broken promises.
- The law was very poorly written so it’s not surprising that there are a lot of problems.
- It’s been very disruptive.
- We are sick and tired of the debate over ObamaCare. We think that any fixes to the law that come from Washington could cause even further disruption.
- (When the King v Burwell case was explained to them:) It’s not okay for the IRS to make up law as they go. That is the job of our elected representatives.
- We trust the states more than Washington to fix the problem — not all of them and they aren’t perfect, but at least we feel we can have some influence there. And if states get it wrong, it doesn’t impact so many people. If they get it right, others can learn from that.
- I think people should be able to choose their own policy. Choices are good. States are better than Washington to fix this mess.