That horrible, awful, worst thing for American democracy ever that is known as the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, has done something remarkable for the American people: it's reduced both financial stress and financial difficulties related to healthcare costs. That goes along with a substantial decrease in the uninsured rate. The Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey for 2014
quantifies all of these improvements.
[T]he Affordable Care Act's subsidized insurance options and consumer protections reduced the number of uninsured working-age adults from an estimated 37 million people, or 20 percent of the population, in 2010 to 29 million, or 16 percent, by the second half of 2014. Conducted from July to December 2014, for the first time since it began in 2001, the survey finds declines in the number of people who report cost-related access problems and medical-related financial difficulties. The number of adults who did not get needed health care because of cost declined from 80 million people, or 43 percent, in 2012 to 66 million, or 36 percent, in 2014. The number of adults who reported problems paying their medical bills declined from an estimated 75 million people in 2012 to 64 million people in 2014.
This is the first reversal in these numbers Commonwealth has found in this biennial survey. "Health insurance really provides people with a financial means to get care," Sara Collins, a vice president at Commonwealth,
tells The New York Times. "We don't know yet that the law is improving people’s health, but this is a first indication that people are affording care that they weren't able to get in the past." In addition to the decrease in the uninsured rate, the fact that significantly fewer people are delaying or forgoing care because of financial costs and significantly fewer people are struggling to pay their bills, the percentage of people who said they're having to pay off
old medical bills has decreased.
That's all, in Commonwealth's words, attributed to the "subsidized insurance options and consumer protections" in the law. Those would be the subsidies now jeopardized for at least 9.6 million people because of the pending challenge the U.S. Supreme Court will be hearing this spring. If the SCOTUS decides those subsidies have to go away, all of these gains go away. Republicans sure aren't going to step up and make the simple fix they could to ensure that folks get to keep their insurance, and the financial security that comes with it.