Two Million Americans Lost Health Coverage/Access in Trump's First Year

A new School of Public Health study finds that two million more Americans avoided health care because of inability to pay, and/or did not have health insurance, at the end of 2017 compared to the end of 2016.

Published in the February issue of Health Affairs, the study examines the period from 2011 to 2017, showing positive trends in healthcare coverage and access following implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA, also known as Obamacare), and a reversal of those trends when newly-elected President Trump and Congressional Republicans began working to dismantle the ACA.

“We hear a lot about the ACA being ‘undermined.’ While we found the ACA isn’t unravelling, there are real consequences to some of the policies that have been put in place,” says Kevin Griffith, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Health Law, Policy & Management and the study’s lead author.

“We see that you have these policy changes that are affecting millions of peoples’ ability to get insurance, and millions of people forgoing care because they can’t afford it.”

https://www.bu.edu/sph/2020/02/03/two-million-americans-lost-health-coverage-access-in-trumps-first-year/