BioMed Research International

Research Article

Health Care Reform: Understanding Individuals’ Attitudes and Information Sources

Table 2

Predictors of attitudes towards health care reform and five provisions.


	Overall impression of health care reform⁺		Affordable coverage		Coverage for everyone		Preexisting conditions		Coverage of children up to age 26		Individual mandate requiring health insurance
Predictors	AOR*	P	AOR	P	AOR	P	AOR	P	AOR	P	AOR	P

Female	1.48	0.005	1.90	0.035	2.25	<0.001	1.99	0.01	2.01	<0.001	1.97	0.004
Nonwhite	1.72	0.024	0.61	0.436	4.31	0.017	0.54	0.14	1.45	0.185	7.83	0.002
Age	0.99	0.039	0.99	0.162	0.98	0.001	1.00	0.30	0.97	<0.001	0.99	0.196
Income	1.00	0.870	0.99	0.004	1.00	0.020	1.00	0.79	1.00	0.222	0.99	0.422
Some college	0.81	0.167	0.78	0.425	0.86	0.408	1.07	0.79	0.80	0.132	0.93	0.782
Democrat	2.75	<0.001	31.3	<0.001	6.38	<0.001	1.89	0.10	2.29	<0.001	2.77	0.001
Republican	0.41	<0.001	0.85	0.619	0.47	<0.001	0.78	0.36	0.83	0.198	0.80	0.375
Insured	1.60	0.036	1.55	0.294	0.94	0.802	1.45	0.27	0.99	0.958	1.57	0.187
Year	1.17	0.068	0.71	0.074	1.02	0.868	0.91	0.53	1.28	0.002	NA^†	NA

The specific questions asked to elicit attitude data are as follows: What is your overall impression of the health care law passed by Congress? Is it…?, How important is making health care more affordable?, How important is ensuring health coverage for everyone?, How important is prohibiting insurance companies from cancelling health plans due to preexisting conditions?, How important is allowing children up to age 26 to be covered by their parents’ health insurance whether or not they are in college?
*AOR: adjusted odds ratio implies controlling for age, gender, race, education, insurance status, and political affiliation. These are for association of favorable attitudes with independent predictors. The binary dependent variable was “attitude”-favorable (1) or unfavorable (0) or important (1) or unimportant (0). P values for odds (2 df, Wald’s test).
^†Data regarding respondents’ attitudes toward the individual mandate to purchase health insurance was only collected in 2012.