An analysis by the Commonwealth Fund "shows that the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance coverage provisions have helped the U.S. make progress toward ensuring that everyone, regardless of race or ethnicity, has access to the health care they need," says Pamela Riley, M.D. She is the organization’s vice president for delivery system reform and a coauthor of the report.
The report shows that the disparities in health care access that blacks and Hispanics face compared to whites narrowed between 2013 and 2015, following implementation of the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) major coverage provisions. Black and Hispanic adults still experience greater difficulty getting needed health care relative to whites, but the report shows that the historically wide gulf began to shrink after the ACA’s coverage expansions took effect. As a group, states that expanded Medicaid saw, on average, greater declines in racial and ethnic disparities on health care access measures than non-expansion states did.
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