Kaiser Foundation Survey Project Focuses on California

The Kaiser Family Foundation has released the first of four planned surveys over the next two years of California residents currently without health insurance. The just-released survey provides baseline data on respondents' knowledge and attitudes regarding insurance coverage, in anticipation of the October 1 start of the sign-up period for the health-insurance exchanges (or marketplaces) under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). Kaiser will attempt to re-survey members of the initial sample of 2,000 respondents three more times over the course of the project; conducting multiple interviews with the same people over time is known as a panel study. As the exchanges go into effect and data from the later phases of the survey are gathered and released, we will learn the rate at which California's eligible uninsured sign up for Obamacare and the characteristics of those who do and do not.