TY  - JOUR
AU  - Gruber, Jonathan
AU  - Sommers, Benjamin D
TI  - The Affordable Care Act’s Effects on Patients, Providers and the Economy: What We’ve Learned So Far
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 25932
PY  - 2019
Y2  - June 2019
DO  - 10.3386/w25932
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w25932
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w25932.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Jonathan Gruber
Department of Economics, E52-434
MIT
77 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02139
Tel: 617/253-8892
Fax: 617/253-1330
E-Mail: gruberj@mit.edu

Benjamin D. Sommers
Harvard T.H. Chan School of 
  Public Health
Department of Health Policy
  and Management
677 Huntington Avenue
Kresge 406
Boston, MA 02115
E-Mail: bsommers@hsph.harvard.edu
AB  - As we approach the tenth anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, it is important to reflect on what has been learned about the impacts of this major reform.  In this paper we review the literature on the impacts of the ACA on patients, providers and the economy.  We find strong evidence that the ACA’s provisions have increased insurance coverage. There is also a clearly positive effect on access to and consumption of health care, with suggestive but more limited evidence on improved health outcomes. There is no evidence of significant reductions in provider access, changes in labor supply, or increased budgetary pressures on state governments, and the law’s total federal cost through 2018 has been less than predicted.  We conclude by describing key policy implications and future areas for research.
ER  -