Most Americans already satisfied with their healthcare before Obamacare rollout: Gallup

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Most Americans already satisfied with their healthcare before Obamacare rollout: Gallup

By Matthew Rusling (Xinhua) 08:22, November 26, 2013

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WASHINGTON, Nov. 25 (Xinhua) -- Most Americans were already satisfied with their own healthcare situations before the launch of the controversial healthcare overhaul, known as Obamacare, according to a Gallup poll released Monday.

Sixty-nine percent of Americans rated their own healthcare coverage overall as excellent or good before the launch of the Obamacare in October, while 32 percent rated healthcare coverage for the entire country as highly, the poll found.

Satisfaction with the cost of one's own healthcare was at its highest in 2001 and dipped slightly in 2006, but has been at 59 percent for the last two years, identical to the average since 2001, the poll found.

"Americans remain generally positive about the quality of healthcare they personally receive, their healthcare coverage, and what they pay for healthcare," Gallup said.

These findings may help explain why the healthcare law has never been highly popular, even before the recent troubles in implementing it. Many Americans simply feel that their healthcare situation is fine as it is, it said.

The poll came amid much controversy over President Barack Obama 's recent healthcare reform rollout. The new laws have sparked outrage among policyholders -- now numbering more than 4 million -- who have been dropped from their insurance plans because their policies did not adhere to Obamacare's strict new guidelines.

What's more, many are prevented from getting insurance through Obamacare, as the website through which visitors can view a range of plans has been riddled with technical glitches since its Oct. 1 launch.

If Americans believe that the new healthcare law will improve healthcare coverage, most will likely feel this benefit is needed more for others than for themselves, given the relatively high existing personal satisfaction with healthcare coverage, the poll found.

Americans' ratings of their own healthcare coverage have remained remarkably steady over the past decade, and always much higher than their ratings of the nation's coverage, the poll found. Fifty-four percent of Americans rated the general quality of healthcare in the U.S. as excellent or good, down slightly from previous years, Gallup found.

Although the majority of Americans believe the U.S. healthcare system has major problems, only about one in five perceive that it is in a state of crisis.

（Editor：LiangJun、Zhang Qian）