Obamacare and the Poor

Niyyah Bilal Hayes
October 19, 2014
Adejumo
POS2041
The Affordable Care Act and Minorities

After decades of health-care reform attempts, the U.S Senate passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (better known as Obamacare or the Affordable Care Act). In response to this the 16th Annual Summer Public Health Research Institute and Videoconference on Minority Health’s (the Institute) June 8th, 2010 topic was “What Will Health-Care Reform Mean for Minority Health Disparities”. As we move forward the U.S slowly pushes toward being a country where no single racial/ethnic group will be a majority of the population, the Affordable Care Act showcases this major shift towards the entrance of racial/ethnic minorities as a part of the wider American view. Instead of an additional addendum on minorities, the act addresses disparities through programs that will benefit most Americans. (What Will Health-Care Reform Mean for Minority Health Disparities, pg. 173) In a time where the “majority” sees improvements made for the minority are at the expense of ‘them’ this was a smart decision.
The Act will lead to reduced insurance rates and better coverage for all people not eligible for a group insurance plan. (pg. 173) Alavarez, one of the presenters and a member of the Department of Health and Human services, offered a startling fact- of the 32 million uninsured Americans one-half of the uninsured are of a racial/ethnic minority group.( pg. 171). The greatest impact of the Act will be the provisions aimed at reducing barriers to care, specifically financial ones; copayments for medical services, mostly those for preventative care, are also among the barriers to care. (pg.173) The Act will require that insurance plans cover a set of preventative services with low co-payments, with higher rates of disease in the communities of the uninsured they will benefit greatly from this increased access. (pg. 173) The Act also expanded the coverage of Medicaid, lowering the threshold and eliminating many of requirements. (pg. 173-174) Unfortunately this will not resolve the issue of many medical providers who don’t accept patients with Medicaid.
With the good unfortunately comes the bad, The Joint Center report remarks that many of the Acts the biggest concern seems to be the cost-containment provision that reduces payments under Medicaid to hospitals that treat the biggest share off low-income, uninsured, and undocumented patients; putting all of the aforementioned patients at risk for care.(pg. 174) The videoconference speakers tacked onto this report highlighting that the Act was unfortunately not designed to address all of the factors associated with health care disparities, but to address one primary barriers to heath care; access to health insurance.
The Act is a great transition point for the elimination of health care barriers for all. The Affordable Care Act represents the greatest advance in public financing of health care since the start of Medicare/caid in 1965. (pg.174). While it doesn’t eliminate all of the disparities in health care it’s a bold and innovative approach to fix many of the problems of today’s health care plan.

Bibliography
Erickson, Sayde, Mayra Alvarez, Ralph Forquera, Tony Whitehead, Anthony Fleg, Tracey Hawkins, Dorothy Browne, M. Cookie Newsom, and Victor Schoenbach. "What Will Health-Care Reform Mean for the Minority Health Disparities?" 126.2 (2011): 170-75. Jstor. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. <www.jstor.org.>.

Bibliography: Erickson, Sayde, Mayra Alvarez, Ralph Forquera, Tony Whitehead, Anthony Fleg, Tracey Hawkins, Dorothy Browne, M. Cookie Newsom, and Victor Schoenbach. "What Will Health-Care Reform Mean for the Minority Health Disparities?" 126.2 (2011): 170-75. Jstor. Web. 19 Oct. 2014. <www.jstor.org.>.