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Ten years after its enactment, public support for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) still only reaches a scant majority. Candidates for the presidency--and the sitting president--have endorsed health reforms that would radically transition US health care away from the current system upon which the ACA was built. Few opinion surveys to date have captured dominant preferences among alternative health reform policies or characterized attitudes and experiences that might be associated with policy preferences. Using a 2019 nationally representative telephone survey, this article considers how variations in political values, attitudes toward government, and experiences with the health care system relate to competing health reform preferences. Differences between those who favor Medicare for All over building on the ACA largely reflect different levels of satisfaction with the status quo and views of private health insurance. By contrast, differences between ACA supporters and those who would favor replacing it with a state-based alternative reflect sharply different political values and attitudes. Key differences remain significant after controlling for demographic, health, and political characteristics. Overwhelming public support still eludes the ACA, and reaching consensus on future directions for health reform will remain challenging given differences in underlying beliefs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard School of Public Health Health News Index, a series of 39 surveys with a total of over 42,000 respondents from 1996 through 2002, measures how closely Americans follow major health stories in the news and what they understand about the issues covered in those stories. On aver- age, four in ten adults reported following health news stories closely. The public reports paying the most attention to stories about public health, followed by health policy and disease-related stories. While knowledge about health news varies, individuals who follow health news stories closely are significantly more likely to give the correct answer to knowledge questions about those stories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the public opinion regarding the national debate in the U.S. Congress over the health care reform in the U.S. It states that the public sent at least three distinct messages to the Congress including the approach of middle class Americans to the cost and security of their health care insurance coverage, achievement of the Congress for comprehensive reform, and specific proposals to overhaul the health care system. It says that the increasing worries of middle class Americans has driven the latest health care reform debate. It mentions that the Americans were divided over the primary choices for reform such as to contain increasing health care costs and ways to achieve universal coverage.