Most doctors think Obamacare opened up healthcare access, study says

Authored by upi.com and submitted by mvea

About 60 percent of physicians in the United States think the Affordable Care Act people gave access to the medical treatment they wouldn't otherwise have had. File Photo by Andrei Rahalski/Shutterstock

Sept. 6 (UPI) -- Most doctors think Obamacare has helped patients get better healthcare, even as a lengthy court battle threatens to strike down the law, new findings show.

About 60 percent of physicians in the United States thought the Affordable Care Act gave more people access to the medical treatment they wouldn't otherwise have had, according to research published September in the journal Health Affairs.

Roughly 20 million people in the United States got coverage through the Affordable Care Act once the law was passed in 2012.

"A slight majority of U.S. physicians, after experiencing the ACA's implementation, believed that it is a net positive for U.S. health care," the authors wrote.

The study included 489 responses from 1,200 physicians surveyed in 2017. About 53 percent of doctors thought the Affordable Care Act "would turn healthcare in the right direction" five years following its launch. That's compared to 42 percent in 2012.

Overall, states that expanded Medicaid options to cover the Affordable Care Act had four fewer heart disease deaths per 100,000 people compared to states that didn't expand.

However, some patients that signed on to the Affordable Care Act have hit some roadblocks. About 12 percent of those who signed up for a plan through the law's healthcare exchange had difficulty getting mental health appointments.

Still, many people who couldn't get coverage prior to the law's passage can now receive treatment for preexisting condition. For example, it helped diabetics who were once denied coverage to get insurance.

"Their favorable impressions increased, despite their reports of declining affordability of insurance, increased administrative burdens, and other challenges they and their patients faced," the authors wrote.

kiowaflyboy on September 9th, 2019 at 01:30 UTC »

Alright, I hate to be that guy but the caption on this post is misleading because it suggests that 60% of the physicians in America are for the Affordable Care Act. I'm paraphrasing but basically the study was conducted amongst 1,200 physicians in 2017 of which roughly 400 responded. Of those 400, 60% responded in favor for the Affordable Care Act but after referencing the background of those physicians the researches found that "only political party affiliation was a significant predictor of support for the ACA in the 2017 results".

FL-8-US on September 9th, 2019 at 00:49 UTC »

As a doctor, let me just say that most doctors don’t have a clue as to whether healthcare access has gone up or down. I have a 300 patient waiting list to get into my clinic and my clinic is scheduling about 6 months in advance. Access could probably go up or down by 20% in society and my daily work life would be the exact same.

ifmb on September 8th, 2019 at 23:54 UTC »

The number of people insured is higher - that is not in doubt. But there are other aspects to healthcare access. One significant change that the ACA brought was forbidding insurance companies from penalizing patients for "pre-existing conditions". It is silly that health insurance is tied to employment in the US, especially when people change employers so often. Before the ACA, insurance companies basically kicked out anyone who was ill or refused to cover any conditions they had up to that point any time they changed their job or if the employer changed the insurance plan. It was ridiculous.