By CQ Staff
November 1, 2013 -- The problems with healthcare.gov don't seem to have affected people's overall attitudes toward the health care law. The American public remains divided, with 44 percent having an unfavorable view of the overhaul and 38 percent a favorable opinion, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation's October monthly tracking poll.
The telephone survey was taken between Oct. 17 and Oct 23, well after the Oct. 1 launch of the federal health care law marketplace proved to be laden with technical issues.
The October ratings on the law are roughly the same as the nonpartisan foundation's September tracking poll. "Even with this slight negative tilt overall, a larger share of the public would like to see Congress expand the law or keep it as is (47 percent) than repeal it (37 percent), and a solid majority (60 percent) say they oppose cutting off funding as a way to stop the law from being implemented, similar to last month," Kaiser officials said in a news release.
Other findings:
- Fifty-five percent said they have enough information to understand the law's impact on their family, up from 47 percent in September.
- Ads providing information about signing up seem to have caught up to the partisan messages. For the first time in Kaiser's tracking polls, the share of respondents who said they saw ads providing information about how to get coverage (36 percent) is about the same as the those who said they saw ads for or against the law (38 percent for each).
- Nearly half the public (48 percent) say the federal government has done a "poor" job implementing the law and another third (32 percent) rate its performance as "only fair".
The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.