The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on People with Disabilities: A 2015 Status Report

PURPOSE AND SCOPE:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) is especially important to people with disabilities who often rely on a broad range of health care services and supports and are more impacted by changes that occur within the healthcare system. Accordingly, in this second part of the ACA report series, NCD provides a snapshot of how early implementation of ACA has impacted the disability community.

The report utilizes a formal literature review, interviews with key informants in ten states with diverse ACA implementation approaches, and a 50-state review of state policies involving key ACA provisions, such as decisions involving Medicaid expansion and selected essential health benefits of particular interest to people with disabilities. The resulting report provides a snapshot of the experience of people with disabilities at a time that the implementation of ACA is in its relative infancy, in the hopes of informing policy decisions now and in the future.