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Inequality in health insurance coverage before and after the Affordable Care Act
Author(s) -
Renna Francesco,
Kosteas Vasilios D.,
Dinkar Kuchibhotla
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
health economics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.55
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1099-1050
pISSN - 1057-9230
DOI - 10.1002/hec.4195
Subject(s) - inequality , health insurance , medicaid , health care , demographic economics , actuarial science , economic inequality , estimation , economics , business , economic growth , mathematics , mathematical analysis , management
This study examines how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affected income related inequality in health insurance coverage in the United States. Analyzing data from the American Community Survey (ACS) from 2010 through 2018, we apply difference‐in‐differences, and triple‐differences estimation to the Recentered Influence Function OLS estimation. We find that the ACA reduced inequality in health insurance coverage in the United States. Most of this reduction was a result of the Medicaid expansion. Additional decomposition analysis shows there was little change in inequality of coverage through an employer plan, and a decrease in inequality for coverage through direct purchase of health insurance. These results indicate that the insurance exchanges also contributed to declining inequality in health insurance coverage.