Experiences of Uninsured With Exchanges Mostly Negative -- Gallup

Overall, 21% of uninsured have visited a government health exchange website

Uninsured Americans who have visited a federal or state health insurance exchange website generally have been unhappy with their experience. Sixty-three percent of those who have visited say their experience using the health exchange was negative, including 30% who say it was "very negative." About a third, 34% say their experience was positive, with 5% rating it as "very positive."

The results are based on Gallup's interviews conducted Oct. 23-Nov. 18 with 1,573 uninsured Americans. Over this period, 17% of Americans said they lacked health insurance, and 21% of those uninsured Americans say they personally visited, or attempted to visit, a state or federal government health insurance exchange website.

Forty percent of uninsured Americans are unsure about which type of exchange website they visited, while 28% say they visited a federal exchange, 14% a state exchange, and 18% both. Stated another way because the "both" responses involve federal and state exchanges, a total of 32% of uninsured Americans who have visited websites went either just to a state site or to a federal and a state site, while 46% went just to a federal exchange or to both.

Although the sample sizes are too small to look at uninsured Americans' experience with the federal and state exchanges separately, recent news reports have indicated that some state exchanges have been more successful than the federal site in signing up people for insurance. This suggests that uninsured Americans' experiences with state exchanges could be helping keep the overall ratings of the exchange website experiences from being even more negative.

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