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THE IMPACT OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT ON RURAL HEALTHCARE
Author(s) -
BoydSeng Tina L.,
Einstein George P.,
Tulp Orien L.
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.2018.32.1_supplement.674.5
Subject(s) - health care , business , health insurance , quality (philosophy) , order (exchange) , rural area , patient protection and affordable care act , descriptive statistics , public economics , economic growth , medicine , finance , economics , philosophy , statistics , mathematics , epistemology , pathology
In 2010 The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed by the U.S. Congress, in a governmental attempt to address the healthcare issues faced by the country. Designed to provide greater coverage to more American citizens, the law has caused an irreversible change in the healthcare systems of the U.S., and in many cases, costs have increased while healthcare quality has decreased. Rural regions suffer additional issues as low competition drives high costs in generally poor areas. In order to gauge the impact of these changes on some rural communities, a local rural community was surveyed using a researcher‐developed quantitative descriptive survey focused on assessing the effects on the quality of the healthcare patients receive, as well as their expenses and level of satisfaction (affordability, availability, accessibility, accommodation, acceptability) following the passage of the ACA. Also, the study sought to compare the results obtained from each different insurance option (employer‐based, self‐paying, personal based, or ACA) in terms of the view of access to healthcare since passing of the ACA. Through comparisons of average scores in each category before and after the passage of the ACA, assessments of the effects of the law on the patient‐perceived quality of healthcare can be made. Analysis of the results showed a statistically committed relationship between age and healthcare provider as well as between income and healthcare provider (both with p< 0.001), and all the comparisons between the perceptions of affordability, availability, accessibility, accommodations and acceptability before the implementation of ACA and after the implementation of ACA were significant (all p's < 0.01). An inspection of the mean differences reveals that on all questions the perceptions and/or beliefs became more negative. These results indicate that among the sampled population, the passing of the ACA has, in most cases, decreased the quality of healthcare provided to patients, at a higher cost than before the law was enacted Support or Funding Information Supported by Institutional Resources of USAT Montserrat and the Einstein Medical Institute, N. Palm Beach, FL, USA. This abstract is from the Experimental Biology 2018 Meeting. There is no full text article associated with this abstract published in The FASEB Journal .