JAMA reports good ACA news

Not much of a headline, I realize, but I wasn't really sure how else to put it. Thanks to R. Adams Dudley for the link.

JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) just reported a study regarding the impact of the ACA on insurance coverage, access to care and health. Not much for me to add here; most of it has been widely reported by many outlets, including myself, but it's always good to have more supporting evidence of results, especially given the massive sample size (over half a million people!). I've reformatted & cleaned up the quoted section below for clarity, and you'd have to log into a JAMA account for the full report, but this gives the general skinny:

Results:

Among the 507 055 adults in this survey, pre-ACA trends were significantly worsening for all outcomes. Compared with the pre-ACA trends, by the first quarter of 2015, the adjusted proportions who were:

• uninsured decreased by 7.9 percentage points
• lacked a personal physician, −3.5 percentage points
• lacked easy access to medicine, −2.4 percentage points
• unable to afford care, −5.5 percentage points
• reported fair/poor health, −3.4 percentage points
• percentage of days with activities limited by health, −1.7 percentage points

Coverage changes were largest among minorities; for example:

• the decrease in the uninsured rate was larger among Latino adults (−11.9 percentage points) than white adults (−6.1 percentage points).
• Medicaid expansion was associated with significant reductions among low-income adults in the uninsured rate (differences-in-differences estimate, −5.2 percentage points), lacking a personal physician (−1.8 percentage points), and difficulty accessing medicine (−2.2 percentage points).