Despite spending over half-a-billion dollars on increasingly mind-blowing promotions for Obamacare, a new survey released today [7] shows that even the website apparently fixed, over one-third of Americans without insurance say they plan to stay that way, even after being told that the new law requires them to get covered or pay a penalty. As CBS notes [8], some 46% of those surveyed also were unaware of the March 31 deadline for being insured as it seems "low-income, young families may have been overlooked. They're probably not spending a lot of time watching television, they never read a newspaper and if they listen to radio it's probably music in the car." 41% cited insurance as still too expensive with, oddly, 39% of middle-aged men preferring to stay uninsured.
[9]
As Bloomberg notes [10], the headline number above hides some other notable highlights (or lowlights)...
Gender matters. When the pollsters asked the uninsured whether they planned to stay that way, despite the individual mandate, 37 percent of men said yes, compared with 29 percent of women. Further confirmation, if anyone needed it, that men are statistically more likely to be morons.
There's no correlation with education. You might have thought people with more years of school would be better attuned to the risks -- physical, emotional, familial, financial, professional -- of going without health insurance. But the survey found that one-third of every group, from high school dropouts to people with graduate degrees, say they'll remain uninsured.
The decision to stay uninsured isn't about party (though reasons for staying uninsured very much are). Among the uninsured, Republicans were more likely than Democrats to say they'll stay that way -- but only slightly, 29 percent to 22 percent. The big difference was for uninsured independents, 41 percent of whom said they won't get insurance.
It's not the young who worry most about cost. A little more than one-third of those 18 to 29 said they would stay uninsured because coverage is too expensive. For those 50 to 64, 39 percent cited cost; for the 30 to 49 group, the share was almost half.
But the young really do think they're invincible. Almost one-third of those 18 to 29 who said they won't get insurance said it's because they don't need it. Just 6 percent of those 30 to 49 said they same, and 11 percent of those 50 to 64.
The Barack Obama administration is doing a terrible job of publicizing the law's subsidies. The people most likely to say they won't get insurance because it's too expensive were those earning $30,000 to $50,000 a year -- those who probably stand to benefit the most from financial assistance. Sure enough, one-third of respondents in that category didn't know about the subsidies.
CBS notes on health insurance resercher's comments that "low-income, young families may have been overlooked. They're probably not spending a lot of time watching television, they never read a newspaper and if they listen to radio it's probably music in the car," she is quoted as saying. "In communities of color, people might hear about [Obamacare] in church, but for people who are not attached to a church, I don't know how they get the information."