74% of ACA enrollees are happy with their coverage

updated Thu May 21, 2015

Most Obamacare enrollees are pretty happy with their coverage, a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation shows. This KFF study is among the first to get beyond basic sign-up numbers and try to measure: do people buying Obamacare actually like what they get? While there are some bumps in the road, the answer, generally, seems to be yes.

Here are five things we now know about what Obamacare enrollees think about their plans.

1) Most Obamacare enrollees like their coverage

The survey of Obamacare enrollees shows that about three-quarters (74 percent) rate their coverage as "excellent" or "good." And 59 percent say that given what they're paying, their plan is of "excellent" or "good" value. Here are five things we learned about Obamacare enrollees' experience.

2) Obamacare enrollees are happy with doctor choice

When KFF drilled down further into what Obamacare enrollees do and don't like about their plans, it found that most people were pretty happy with the choice of doctors — a somewhat surprising finding, given the fact that marketplace plans have relatively narrow networks.

Obamacare enrollees were most frustrated, meanwhile, with the size of the annual deductible. Thirty-six percent of those surveyed said they were "somewhat dissatisfied" or "very dissatisfied" with that part of their plan.

3) People with high-deductible plans are way less happy with Obamacare

And when KFF divided enrollees up by deductible size — pulling out people who had deductibles below $1,500 as "low-deductible enrollees" and those with deductibles above $3,000 as "high-deductible enrollees" — they saw big gaps in satisfaction levels.

4) Not many Obamacare enrollees are shopping around

One big goal of the Obamacare marketplaces was to give insurance shoppers the ability to easily compare and pick between plans. The KFF data shows that most people who renewed their plans in 2015 didn't do this; 69 percent of them stuck with the plan they bought last year.

When asked why they didn't shop, the most common answer was they were satisfied with their current plan and didn't see a reason to change. You see this type of attitude show up in other health-care programs, too: only 13 percent of Medicare prescription drug benefit enrollees, for example, typically switch plans during open enrollment.

5) A quarter of Obamacare enrollees oppose Obamacare

Personally, I found this the most interesting finding of the KFF poll: 26 percent of people enrolled in Obamacare plans feel "very unfavorable" about Obamacare. These are people getting insurance through Obamacare!

It's possible that these are the same people who, in the first chart, rate their coverage as "not good" or "poor." My hunch though, from covering the health-care law, is that this mostly reflects the deep partisan divide over Obamacare. The law, for many, has become a proxy for what people think about President Obama, and less about what the health reform law actually does.

Categories: Marketplace