Rep. Johnson celebrates as Affordable Care Act Turns 6
March 23, 2016
Press Release
Congressman Joins Colleagues on Steps of Capitol To Recognize ACA's Birthday
March 23 marks the 6th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act. In the six years since a Democratic Congress enacted the Affordable Care Act, important progress has been made to bring more access to quality, affordable health care. Today, 20 million more Americans have insurance because of the ACA, bringing our uninsured rate to an all-time low. Since the ACA was enacted, health care prices have been rising at the slowest rate in five decades. And with new protections and benefits, everyone’s insurance provides preventive services at no extra cost, can’t cap coverage, and isn’t allowed to discriminate based on pre-existing conditions.
On it's sixth birthday, Rep. Johnson reviews the ACA's accomplishments in Georgia.
Improved Access to Care:
• Lowers the uninsured rate. Gallup recently estimated that the uninsured rate in Georgia in 2015 was 15.9 percent, down from 21.4 percent in 2013.
• Prohibits coverage denials and reduced benefits, protecting as many as 4,323,897 Georgians who have some type of pre-existing health condition, including 613,253 children.
• Eliminates lifetime and annual limits on insurance coverage and establishes annual limits on out-of-pocket spending on essential health benefits, benefiting 3,317,000 people in Georgia, including 1,256,000 women and 916,000 children.
• Allows states to expand Medicaid to all non-eligible adults with incomes under 133 percent of the federal poverty level. If Georgia expands Medicaid, an additional 389,000 uninsured people would gain coverage.
• Establishes a system of state and federal Health Insurance Exchanges, or Marketplaces, to make it easier for individuals and small-business employees to purchase health plans at affordable prices. During the open enrollment period for 2016 coverage, 587,845 people in Georgia selected a plan through the Marketplace, including approximately 264,530 new consumers and 182,232 young adults. In Georgia, 76 percent of Marketplace consumers could have selected a plan for $100 per month or less after tax credits for 2016 coverage.
• Created a temporary high-risk pool program to cover uninsured people with pre-existing conditions prior to 2014 reforms, which helped 3,958 people in Georgia.
• Creates health plan disclosure requirements and simple, standardized summaries so 4,697,400 people in Georgia can better understand coverage information and compare benefits.
After Health Reform: More Affordable Care:
• Creates a tax credit that, during the most recent open enrollment period, has helped 507,619 Marketplace enrollees in Georgia who otherwise might not be able to afford it sign up for health coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace.
• Requires health insurers to provide consumers with rebates if the amount they spend on health benefits and quality of care, as opposed to advertising and marketing, is too low. Last year, 187,600 consumers in Georgia received $17,253,523 in rebates. Since this requirement was put in place in 2011 more than $2.4 billion in total refunds have been paid to consumers nationwide through 2014.
• Eliminates out-of-pocket costs for preventive services like immunizations, certain cancer screenings, contraception, reproductive counseling, obesity screening, and behavioral assessments for children. This coverage is guaranteed for 4,187,077 people in Georgia, including 1,704,643 women.
• Eliminates out-of-pocket costs for 1,118,015 Medicare beneficiaries in Georgia for preventive services like cancer screenings, bone-mass measurements, annual physicals, and smoking cessation.
• Phases out the “donut hole” coverage gap for 141,609 Medicare prescription drug beneficiaries in Georgia, who have saved an average of $1,051 per beneficiary.
• Creates Accountable Care Organizations consisting of doctors and other health-care providers who come together to provide coordinated, high-quality care at lower costs to 214,034 Medicare beneficiaries in Georgia.
• Phases out overpayments through the Medicare Advantage system, while requiring Medicare Advantage plans to spend at least 85 percent of Medicare revenue on patient care. Since 2009, Medicare Advantage enrollment has grown by 338,902 to 511,825 in Georgia while premiums have dropped by 10 percent nationwide.
After Health Reform: Improved Quality and Accountability to You:
• Provides incentives to hospitals in Medicare to reduce hospital-acquired infections and avoidable readmissions. Creates a collaborative health-safety learning network, the Partnership for Patients, which includes 99 hospitals in Georgia, to promote best quality practices. Avoidable readmissions have fallen since 2010, saving 87,000 lives and $20 billion in health care costs, and the rate of one common deadly hospital acquired infection, central-line blood stream infections, fell by 50 percent from 2008 to 2014 nationwide.
We're not done. Other legislation and executive actions are continuing to advance the cause of effective, accountable and affordable health care. This includes:
• Advancing innovative care delivery models and value-based payments in Medicare and Medicaid. The Administration set goals of tying 30 percent of traditional Medicare payments to alternative payment models by the end of 2016 and 50 percent by the end of 2018, and met its 2016 goal 11 months early.
• Proposals to invest in targeted research and technologies to advance the BRAIN Initiative, Precision Medicine Initiative, and cancer research.
• A new funding pool for Community Health Centers to build, expand and operate health-care facilities in underserved communities. Health Center grantees in Georgia served 370,071 patients in 2014 and received $225,241,141 through fiscal year 2015 under the health care law to offer a broader array of primary care services, extend their hours of operations, hire more providers, and renovate or build new clinical spaces.
• Health provider training opportunities, with an emphasis on primary care, including a significant expansion of the National Health Service Corps. As of September 30, 2015, there were 182 Corps clinicians providing primary care services in Georgia, compared to 53 clinicians in 2008.
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