Sunday, March 6, 2016

Public Opinion Quarterly Article Reviews U.S. Attitude Trends On Government Role in Health-Insurance Coverage

The Spring 2016 issue of Public Opinion Quarterly features an article entitled "Support for Government Provision of Health Care and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" by Juliane Corman and David Levin (click here for abstract). As the title suggests, the authors embed their discussion of public opinion trends in support for the particular legislation embodied in the PPACA (also known simply as the ACA or "Obamacare") within Americans' opinions on the broader question of whether it is the role of government to see that everyone has health-insurance coverage.

The article is 66 pages long, divided roughly into 54 pages of tables, 7 pages of text, and 5 pages of references. The analyses focus on results in full national samples, as opposed to subgroups such as men and women. Given the huge amount of work done by the authors in compiling the tables and possible space limitations they faced, I can't fault them for not doing more. For anyone who is interested, I summarized age, gender, and regional differences in support for health care reform during 2009.

For anyone interested in public-opinion dynamics during the health care debates of the Obama years, I would say the Corman and Levin article is a must-read!