The Affordable Care Act has significantly improved access to healthcare for African-Americans and Latinos, with those groups benefiting slightly more whites, according to a study published in a medical journal.
Racial and ethnic disparities in access to health care and insurance coverage have been well documented, say the authors. So, with 17 million newly insured because of the law, “it is reasonable to expect the ACA would benefit racial and ethic minorities.”
To test that hypothesis, the four authors of the report compared data from 2011 and 2014, looking at insurance coverage and the likelihood that individuals would delay necessary medical care or skip it altogether.
The source of the data was the National Health Interview Survey, which included 52,800 whites. 13,700 African-Americans, and 17,000 Latinos, as well as 8,200 others.
The uninsured rates in 2014, compared to 2011, were reduced by 7% for African Americans and for Latinos, 3% for whites, and 5% for other racial and ethnic groups.
Access to physicians improved for all groups, with Latinos 5% more likely to have visited a doctor, African Americans were 3% more likely, and whites were 2%.
Minorities benefitted more than whites in terms of gaining insurance, the study found. The probability of being uninsured in 2014 were 4% lower for African Americans than for whites, while Latinos were 3% less likely to be uninsured than were whites.
The somewhat smaller declines in uninsured rates among Latinos may result in part from the fact that “recent Latino immigrants are more likely to live in states that are not participating in the Medicaid expansion,” the authors say. Poor outreach to Spanish-speaking communities may also have affected enrollment, they say.
“Our results demonstrate that racial and ethnic minorities, who have historically encountered more disparities in coverage and access [to medical care] have improved more on these measures under the ACA compared with whites,” the authors wrote.
They note that the study, published in the journal “Medical Care,” has some limitations. Data in 2014 may have been distorted by late enrollment. In addition, the study looks only at coverage and utilization, not health care quality and outcomes.