HR3590 Health Care Bill & Government Health Insurance

One of the major beneficiaries of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are senior citizens. However, according to a feature on Health Leaders Media, seniors are not as informed as they ought to be regarding the provisions of health care reform, and what the new law means to them.

This conclusion was drawn from a survey that was released by the National Council on Aging (NCOA) on Monday. The said survey was conducted by Harris International, and the results of the survey indicated that none of the 636 senior citizens who were interviewed could answer correctly all 12 questions regarding health care reform that were chosen by the NCOA.

During a briefing held in Washington, David Krane, vice president of public affairs and policy research for Harris Interactive, shared additional statistics based on the survey. He added that only 17 percent of senior adults who were interviewed could correctly answer more than half of the questions, while only 9 percent could correctly answer at least two-thirds of the questions.

Based on the over-all results of the survey, Krane suggested “more education about the subject [of Medicare and healthcare reform], which is obviously very complicated.”

In order to address the concerns that rose out of the survey, the NCOA announced the launch of a campaign, “Straight Talk for Seniors on Health Reform.” The announcement was made by James Firman, president and CEO of NCOA, who said: “Seniors need to know the key facts about health reform so that they can be informed consumers and educated citizens.” The campaign will include, among others, townhall events and educational materials.