STAT February 3, 2020
The signing of the Affordable Care Act in 2010 ushered in the largest expansion in the number of Americans covered by health insurance since the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid more than 50 years ago. The ACA provided health new coverage to 19 million previously uninsured working-age people, allowing many of them to afford the care they need.
In spite of that expansion of insurance coverage, though, Americans’ ability to afford care is no better now than it was two decades ago.
In a study we published last week in JAMA Internal Medicine, we and several colleagues showed that Americans actually have more unmet health care needs today than they had two decades ago. We defined unmet health care needs...