Has access to health care for people with preexisting conditions worsened since the passage of the Affordable Care Act?
By Jacqueline Agustin
Copy link
Copy featured image
NO
Under the Affordable Care Act, health-insurance companies cannot refuse to cover patients with preexisting conditions or charge them more for coverage. From 2013 to 2015, 16.5 million non-elderly adults gained coverage; of these, 2.6 million had pre-existing conditions.
Before the law was passed in 2010, insurers could charge higher premiums, limit benefits or deny coverage to those with pre-existing conditions. In early 2010, 19% of individual insurance applications were denied, most often for health reasons. The ACA incorporated earlier limited protections for some patients with preexisting conditions, while broadening protection across the population.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTOR
Between 2020 and 2022, under close editorial supervision, Gigafact contracted a group of freelance writers and editors to test the concepts for fact briefs and provide inputs to our software development process. We call this effort Gigafact Foundry. Over the course of these two years, Gigafact Foundry writers published over 1500 fact briefs in response to claims they found online. Their important work forms the basis of Gigafact formats and editorial guidelines, and is available to the public on Gigafact.org. Readers should be aware that while there is still a lot of relevant information to be found, not all fact briefs produced by Gigafact Foundry reflect Gigafact's current methods and standards for fact briefs. If you come across any that you feel are out of date and need to be looked at with fresh eyes, don't hesitate to contact us at support@gigafact.org.