- Although Congress has prescribed a comprehensive federal role in health care finance under the Affordable Care Act, money has a direct and immediate impact on the delivery of health care and the manner in which Americans obtain that care.
- Therefore, higher health insurance rates, higher deductibles, and less competitive health insurance markets have been the result of the Affordable Care Act so far.
What happened in the third year of the Affordable Care Act?
First and foremost, the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) improvements in health insurance coverage and access to care have continued to grow in the third year. First and foremost, a trend toward better self-assessed health developed in the third year, with the effect being substantially driven by the Affordable Care Act’s non-Medicaid components.
Did the ACA improve access to care in 2016?
In particular, we demonstrate that the Affordable Care Act’s influence on access to care continued to rise in 2016, while gains in self-assessed health appeared that were not obvious using the same research methodology and data source but only two years of posttreatment data in previous studies.