A recent study revealed that low-income U.S. citizens would have benefitted if their states had expanded Medicaid in 2014 under the Affordable Care Act.
Researches who conducted the study discovered that if there is expanded access to the health insurance program of the government, there would be improved chronic disease diagnoses, and increased healthcare use and insurance coverage among low income adults.
"It looks like there is better medical care for these adults," said Laura Wherry, the lead author of the study conducted by the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare has a key provision which is to encourage states to expand their Medicaid programs by 2014. However, a Supreme Court decision that allows state to choose not to expand has resulted in only 26 states which have chosen to expand their Medicaid programs.
The researchers analyzed data gathered from the 2010 to 2014 survey of low-income U.S. adult with ages from 19 to 64.
Another study disclosed the reasons why the healthcare cost of most Americans are increasing very sharply. A study conducted by the Blue Cross Shield Association on March 30 tried to uncover the answers.
Their study is deemed to be authoritative since Blue Cross has more patients than other health insurer in the nation.
Blue Cross researchers found out that, among other things, new health plan enrollees in 2014 to 2015 have higher rates of depression, diabetes, coronary artery disease, Hepatitis C, HIV and hypertension than those enrolled before Obamacare.
These new enrollees also have more prescriptions filled, in-patient admissions, emergency room visits and outpatient visits. They were given considerably more medical care on average compared to those with employer-based or individual plans.
Another reason is that on average, medical costs for new enrollees were 19 percent higher than those who have employer-based health plans in 2014, and 22 percent greater than last year.
