What was more surprising is that people who got the new coverage were generally happy with the product. Overall, 73 percent of people who bought health plans and 87 percent of those who signed up for Medicaid said they were somewhat or very satisfied with their new health insurance. Seventy-four percent of newly insured Republicans liked their plans. Even 77 percent of people who had insurance before — including members of the much-publicized group whose plans got canceled last year — were happy with their new coverage.

Larry Levitt, the senior vice president for special initiatives at the Kaiser Family Foundation, another research group that polls on the Affordable Care Act, said he wasn’t sure we’d see such high satisfaction so early. The law’s requirement that Americans obtain insurance always made him wonder whether people would be glad to have insurance if they felt forced to buy it. “It’s possible people may have felt coerced into buying coverage, even if they didn’t like it or didn’t feel it was a good value,” he said in an email. “That doesn’t seem to be happening so far.”