Despite critics' howls that Obamacare will lead to rationing of health care, a new survey finds it's actually doing the opposite. The number of people who put off medical care because of cost declined by 14 million in 2014, compared with two years earlier, according to a survey by the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that supports broader access to health care.
In the U.S., health care is "rationed"—i.e., scarce resources are allotted—based on people's ability to pay for it. The Commonwealth survey found that significantly fewer Americans aged 19 to 64 were skipping needed doctors' visits or prescriptions in 2014 than two years earlier.
A bunch of surveys and analyses have shown that insurance coverage is increasing under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The new data are important because they show that financial barriers to care are coming down as well—even though many Obamacare plans come with high deductibles and other cost-sharing that makes patients shoulder greater costs.
Commonwealth's survey, which reached a random sample of 4,251 working-age adults in the last half of 2014, differs from a Gallup poll released in November. About one-third of respondents told Gallup that they or a family member had delayed treatment in the past year because of cost, statistically similar to recent years. (Gallup included people 65 and over, who are eligible for Medicare, a group that was excluded in the Commonwealth data.)
The ACA clearly hasn't solved problems of cost and access to health care in the U.S. By Commonwealth's estimate, 66 million people still reported forgoing medical care they couldn't afford. While the proportion was nearly twice as high for the uninsured, 28 percent of people who were covered all year still said they couldn't afford the care they need.
