Affordable Care Act Reduced Racial Disparities in Health Care Access [Barrier: Inequity in Health Care, Access to Care, Cost of Care]

An online article from March 19, 2023 on CBS News entitled The Affordable Care Act has significantly reduced racial disparities in health care access, report says discusses research that indicates the impact that the Affordable Care Act has had on health coverage. The report by the CommonWealth Fund Inequities in Health Insurance Coverage and Access for Black and Hispanic Adults: The Impact of Medicaid Expansion and the Pandemic states:

“Since its passage in 2010, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has helped cut the U.S. uninsured
rate nearly in half while significantly reducing racial and ethnic disparities in both
insurance coverage and access to care — particularly in states that expanded their
Medicaid programs.”

Highlights from the research are:

• “Insurance coverage rates improved for Black, Hispanic, and white
  adults between 2013 and 2021. The coverage gap between Black and
  white adults dropped from 9.9 to 5.3 percentage points, while the gap
  between Hispanic and white adults dropped from 25.7 to 16.3 points.
• Uninsured rates for adults in all three groups improved during the
  first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, a finding that held true in
  states that had expanded Medicaid and those that had not. Black and
  Hispanic adults experienced larger gains in Medicaid and individualmarket coverage than white adults between 2019 and 2021.
• Between 2013 and 2021, states that expanded Medicaid eligibility
  had higher rates of insurance coverage and health care access,
  with smaller disparities between racial/ethnic groups and larger
  improvements, than states that didn’t expand Medicaid.”