Strategic Planning & Timelines

In January 2014, the ACA extended access to health insurance coverage to an estimated 30 million previously uninsured people. This issue brief provides state-level estimates of the increased demand for physician and hospital services that is expected to result from expanded access and assesses the sufficiency of the existing supply of providers to accommodate the anticipated increase in demand. Increases of the magnitude likely to be generated by the Affordable Care Act will have modest effects on the demand for health services, and the existing supply of providers should be sufficient to accommodate this increased demand.

The enactment of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) ushered in sweeping changes to the U.S. health care system. While the law touched almost every aspect of our health care system, the parts of the law that have garnered the most attention, and generated the most controversy, are those relating to the availability and affordability of health insurance coverage. The coverage provisions in the law were aimed at improving access to insurance, enhancing the quality of coverage by imposing minimum benefit standards, and increasing the affordability of coverage through expanded public programs and new subsidies for private coverage. This brief examines these coverage provisions, providing an update on how they have been implemented and assessing their impact. It also discusses key issues looking ahead.

Hospital community benefit policy is evolving differently by state. Since passage of the ACA in 2010 and subsequent rulemaking, state community benefit policy has increasingly moved beyond a focus on financial assistance policies to pursuing strategies that address the social determinants of health and promote community health. In this issue brief, Hilltop’s Hospital Community Benefit Program examines state-level community benefit oversight by studying specific changes to community benefit statutes, regulations, and policies in 5 select states – Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New York. The Hilltop Institute also has released an update of its interactive map detailing each state’s community benefit laws.

The Affordable Care Act provides financial assistance via cost sharing reductions (CSR) and premium tax credits to help modest income individuals purchase health insurance and reduce the direct costs of their care. This brief estimates the characteristics of the CSR eligible population using the Urban Institute’s Health Insurance Policy Simulation Model. Researchers found that the CSR eligible individuals are most likely to live in the South, to be single adults without children, and to be White, non-Hispanic. Researchers also estimate the average value of a CSR to be $479 in 2016, with the value varying by the eligible person’s income.

In January 2014, the major coverage provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)—including the expansion of Medicaid eligibility and the availability of subsidized coverage through Health Insurance Marketplaces— went into effect. As the first year of new coverage under the ACA comes to a close and the end of the second open enrollment period nears, there is great interest in understanding why some people continue to lack coverage and in reaching out to the eligible uninsured. This report, based on the 2014 Kaiser Survey of Low-Income Americans and the ACA, profiles the nonelderly adult population that remained uninsured as of Fall 2014.