Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Health insurance literacy in the United States has been increasing over the last ten years, due in large part to government enrollment outreach efforts and media coverage of the design and implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, there is not a substantial amount of research into whether an increased understanding of health insurance is correlated with a change in political opinion, in this case specifically the expansion of the Medicaid program under the ACA. My thesis uses the Health Reform Monitoring Survey (HRMS), administered by the Urban Institute, to examine how opinion on Medicaid expansion at the state-level is related to level of health insurance literacy. I am running an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with level of support or opposition of Medicaid expansion in a respondent’s state as the dependent variable, and health insurance literacy as the primary independent variable. I am also controlling for my sample’s demographic makeup, education, income, MSA status, and source of health insurance coverage. I anticipate that the two variables of interest will be positively correlated, which would have significant ramifications for the future of the Medicaid program and for health insurance policymakers seeking to boost public support for their initiatives.