With about 20 million Americans now covered through private health plans under the ACA’s insurance marketplaces or Medicaid expansions, researchers have been focusing on a question that was not an explicit goal of the law: whether anyone is healthier as a result.
It is difficult to prove conclusively that the law has made a difference in people’s health, but strong evidence has emerged in the past few years. Compared with similar people who have stable coverage through their jobs, previously uninsured people who bought ACA health plans with federal subsidies had a big jump in detection of high blood pressure and in the number of prescriptions they had filled, according to a 2018 study in the journal Health Affairs.
And after the law allowed young adults to stay longer on their parents’ insurance policies, fewer 19- to 25-year-olds with asthma failed to see a doctor because it cost too much, according to an analysis of survey results published earlier this year by researchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
via Washington Post.
Related Reading:
How the Affordable Care Act Helps Seniors.
The ACA provides new ways to help hospitals, doctors and other health care providers coordinate care for beneficiaries so that health care quality is improved and unnecessary spending reduced.
- Lower-Cost Prescription Drugs.
- Preventive Services and Annual Wellness Visit.
- Lower Medicare Part B Premiums.
- Medicare Fraud, Waste and Abuse.