Many Americans applauded the Obama administration after the implementation of the Affordable Care Act, claiming the health law reduced the number of uninsured Americans. However, some Americans remain skeptical as to whether these individuals were previously uninsured, according to The New York Times.
Here are four key thoughts:
1. Millions of Americans have signed up for private health insurances, with many attributing this increase to the ACA. However, critics claim these Americans were not uninsured, but were previously insured people whose employers ceased offering coverage once the government made subsidized options available.
2. It is difficult to track if such individuals were insured because the majority of private surveys have a faulty track record in measuring what kind of health insurance people have. The census report provides more reliable results and found the number of Americans with employer coverage has remained relatively flat. There were no statistically significant changes between 2013 and 2014.
3. While the healthcare law provided affordable care for the low income population, the census showed that the take-up among middle-class Americans was low, indicating the middle-class took less advantage of the ACA than the lower-class.
4. The findings showed states that expanded Medicaid had significantly higher reductions in their uninsured rates than those states that did not.
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