Seventy-seven percent of U.S. adults who don't have health insurance and haven't signed up for any say they are aware of the fine, a U.S. survey indicates.
The survey findings are based on Gallup Daily tracking of uninsured Americans' knowledge and awareness of the 2010 Affordable Care Act and its provisions.
The percentage of the uninsured who say they will buy insurance rather than pay a fine dropped slightly in mid-November. From Nov. 9-19, 62 percent of those who are uninsured and have not purchased insurance for 2014 said they will get health insurance, down from 67 percent in the last part of October.
This percentage has fluctuated since Gallup began tracking it in late September, and from a big-picture perspective, it does not show a pattern of major increase or decrease, Gallup officials said.
Less than half of those who have already purchased or plan to get health insurance said they will get it via the state or federal health insurance exchanges, while the rest either say they will get it elsewhere or remain uncertain, Gallup said.
About one-third of those who are currently uninsured are familiar with the health insurance exchanges, which is slightly higher than in late September when Gallup began tracking this measure. It's possible that the news focus on the problems with the exchanges could account for the slight rise in familiarity.
However, the majority of those who don't have insurance continue to say they are not too or not at all familiar with the exchanges.
The telephone survey of 666 U.S. adults, who said they currently do not have health insurance, was conducted Nov. 9-19, on the Gallup Daily tracking survey. The margin of error is 5 percentage points.
