59 percent of California physicians support Affordable Care Act, study shows

UCLA researchers have found that 77 percent of California primary care and specialty physicians understand the basics of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and 59 percent support it. The survey, conducted by doctors from the UCLA department of family medicine, was published in the peer-reviewed journal Family Medicine.

Researchers also found that a majority of the 525 doctors surveyed believe ACA will steer the country's health care in the right direction.

The doctors' stance on the law appeared to be closely correlated with their political affiliations and medical specialties.

A majority of those polled thought the ACA would either help their practice (25 percent) or have no effect at all (36 percent), while 39 percent thought their practice would be hurt by the legislation.

"The United States is in an unprecedented era of health care reform that is pushing medical professionals and medical educators to evaluate the future of their patients, their careers and the field of medicine," said Dr. Gerardo Moreno, assistant professor of family medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study's senior author. "This survey provides us a snapshot of what physicians think about health care reform. Physicians are a trusted source of information for health policy issues and learning, so investigating what drives their opinions on the ACA is important."

Among the other findings:

• 67 percent of primary care doctors strongly or somewhat agree that the ACA steers United States health care in the right direction, compared with 56 percent of specialists.
• 38 percent of generalists think the health reform act will help their practice, compared with 20 percent of specialists.
• 29 percent of primary care physicians believe the law will hurt their practice, versus 43 percent of specialists.
• 33 percent of generalists feel the ACA will not help their practice, compared with 37 percent of specialists.
• Those who do not endorse the ACA are likelier to be compensated by billing only and not by salary, politically conservative and dissatisfied with the practice of medicine.
• Physicians who favor the law are more likely to be compensated by salary, hold liberal political opinions and find satisfaction in their jobs.
• Those who think the ACA will help their practice are likelier to be primary care doctors, compensated by salary, politically liberal and satisfied practicing medicine.

The researchers note that the survey results could have been influenced by the desire to give socially acceptable answers.