Introduction Illinois hospitals have experienced a marked decrease in the number of uninsured patients after implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). However, the full impact of health insurance expansion on trauma mortality is still unknown. The objective of this study was to determine the impact of ACA insurance expansion on trauma patients hospitalized in Illinois. Methods We perfo...

About 2.13 million nonelderly Californians who were uninsured for all or part of 2009 are newly-eligible for Medi-Cal under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010. Analysis of the 2009 California Health Interview Survey indicates that this newly-eligible population is often single, working-age and employed. Their rates of most chronic conditions are similar to those curren...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) established the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program (ERRP) to provide temporary stability to the employer-supported retiree health care benefit market until the major provisions of the law ensuring every individual access to individual insurance become effective in 2014. The $5 billion appropriation was expected to last four years, but was expe...

POLICY POINTS Puerto Rico is the United States' largest territory, home to nearly 4 million American citizens, yet it has remained largely on the outskirts of US health policy, including the Affordable Care Act (ACA). We analyzed national survey data from 2011 to 2012 and found that despite its far poorer population, Puerto Rico outperforms the mainland United States on several measures of heal...

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopted the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation that eight preventive services for women, including at least one annual well-woman visit (WWV), be included in the defined list of preventive care services providedwithout cost sharing under the Affordable Care Act (ACA, Section 2713; Institute of Medicine, 2011). WWVs are a key feature of ...

CONTEXT The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is changing the landscape of health systems across the United States, as well as the functioning of governmental public health departments. As a result, local health departments are reevaluating their roles, objectives, and the services they provide. OBJECTIVE We gathered perspectives on the current and future impact of the ACA on g...

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) contains substantial new requirements aimed at increasing rates of health insurance coverage. Because many of these provisions impose additional costs on the states, officials need reliable estimates of the likely impact of the ACA in their state. To demonstrate the usefulness of modeling for state-level decisionmaking, RAND undertook a preli...

Americans are ill-prepared for many of the consequences of aging and possible disability. They save too little, they do not prepare emotionally for separation from work, and they are not prepared to absorb the costs of needing long-term services and supports (LTSS) in the event that they experience functional impairments. This leaves most Americans exposed to the potentially catastrophic costs ...

Continuing the Push for Cost Reductions The single most important issue in health care is eliminating unnecessary medical spending. Health costs have traditionally increased at 1% to 2% annually above the growth of the economy. Long-term financial security requires the growth in cost to slow to economic growth or less. With about one-third of medical spending estimated to be wasted, achieving l...

Many advocates of universal health care put competition and consumer choice at the center of the latest major push for health reform. Dozens of major organizations close to the Democratic Party, including the AFLCIO, Moveon.org, and the Children’s Defense Fund, fought on behalf of a remarkably modest solution: creation of a public health plan — essentially a nonprofit insurance company — to com...