Poll: Majority followed O-Care stories in January

A majority of the public closely followed stories about ObamaCare’s rollout in the month of January, according to a new poll.

The Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) debuted the survey Friday as part of a new effort to report on what media stories are capturing the public’s attention.

{mosads}The implementation of the Affordable Care Act garnered more attention than any other healthcare story, the survey found, with 55 percent saying they followed it “very” or “fairly” closely.

Legal action surrounding ObamaCare’s birth control mandate was next in the public’s mind, with 46 percent saying they followed the coverage.

After that came stories about the healthcare law’s relevance in the 2014 midterm elections (43 percent) and state decisions on the Medicaid expansion (38 percent), the poll found.

Still, no healthcare story was able to rival coverage of the U.S. economy, which garnered attention from about seven in 10 people.

While the KFF did not release findings from last fall, it is expected that many people’s focus on ObamaCare’s rollout dropped off as the story fell from the headlines in December.

“The index is designed to help news organizations and everyone in the health field see where they may want to do more to inform the public about the big health issues of the day,” KFF President and CEO Drew Altman said.