The ACA: Impacts on Health, Access, and Employment

Abstract

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. This comprehensive health care reform legislation sought to expand health care coverage to millions of Americans, control health care costs, and improve the overall quality of the health care system. The ACA required that all US citizens and legal residents have qualifying health insurance by 2014. In this paper we give readers a brief overview of the effects of the ACA based on recent research. We then turn our attention to the possibility of using the ACA expansion to answer important underlying questions, such as: To what extent does the holding of insurance lead to improvements in access to care? To what extent does the holding of coverage lead to improvements in health? In mental health? Are there likely general equilibrium effects on labor force participation, hours worked, employment setting, and indeed even the probability of marrying? By necessity, researchers’ ability to answer these questions depends on the availability of data, so we discuss current and potential data sources relevant for answering these questions. We also look to what has been studied about the health reform in Massachusetts and early Medicaid expansions to speculate what we can expect to learn about the effects of the ACA on these outcomes in the future.

The role of race and insurance in trauma patients’ mortality: A cross-sectional analysis based on a nationwide sample

“…A multivariate logistic regression model was employed, adjusting for age, race, sex, median household income and Affordable Care Act Medicaid Expansion (ACAME) enactment in 2014. The expansion of Medicaid provides health insurance to those under 65 with incomes up to 133% of the US federal poverty level [ 30 ]. In the sensitivity analysis, an interaction term was incorporated into the multivariate logistic regression model to evaluate if insurance status influenced the relationship between race and outcomes.…”

Social determinants of health as drivers of fungal disease

“…117 Additionally, many communities globally affected by communicable diseases such as neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are of low socioeconomic status and lack access to health services. 118 Studies have shown that expanding health coverage decreases health disparities, 119 , 120 and it is likely that health disparities are lower in settings with universal access to health care compared to settings that lack health care access for all.…”

Impact of Medicaid Expansion on Trauma Patients at Extreme Risk of Mortality: A Time-Series Analysis

“…However, a 2012 US Supreme Court ruling granted individual states the authority to decide whether to adopt this provision. 6 As of February 28, 2023, 40 of the 50 US states, along with the District of Columbia (DC), have enacted Medicaid Expansion . 7 In-hospital mortality due to trauma, which is sensitive to the timeliness of care, external factors, and resource availability, serves as a metric for assessing the effectiveness of healthcare interventions, the performance of healthcare facilities, and healthcare policies.…”

“…However, a 2012 US Supreme Court ruling granted individual states the authority to decide whether to adopt this provision. 6 As of February 28, 2023, 40 of the 50 US states, along with the District of Columbia (DC), have enacted Medicaid Expansion . 7…”