Early Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Care Access, Risky Health Behaviors, and Self-Assessed Health

Charles Courtemanche, James Marton, Benjamin Ukert, Aaron Yelowitz and Daniela Zapata ()
Additional contact information
Daniela Zapata: American Institutes for Research

No 10649, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: The goal of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was to achieve nearly universal health insurance coverage through a combination of mandates, subsidies, marketplaces, and Medicaid expansions, most of which took effect in 2014. We use data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System to examine the impacts of the ACA on health care access, risky health behaviors, and self-assessed health after two years. We estimate difference-in-difference-in-differences models that exploit variation in treatment intensity from state participation in the Medicaid expansion and pre-ACA uninsured rates. Results suggest that the ACA led to sizeable improvements in access to health care in both Medicaid expansion and non-expansion states, with the gains being larger in expansion states along some dimensions. No statistically significant effects on risky behaviors or self-assessed health emerge for the full sample. However, we find some evidence that the ACA improved self-assessed health among older non-elderly adults, particularly in expansion states.

Keywords: Affordable Care Act; health insurance; Medicaid; health; obesity; smoking; drinking (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I13 I18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 74 pages
Date: 2017-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea and nep-ias
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (33)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp10649.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Early Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Care Access, Risky Health Behaviors, and Self‐Assessed Health (2018)
Working Paper: Early Effects of the Affordable Care Act on Health Care Access, Risky Health Behaviors, and Self-Assessed Health (2017)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp10649

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().