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What the American Health Care Act would have meant for California
Although the American Health Care Act, or AHCA, failed to attract enough votes to advance last week, the ideas contained within the bill have long been popular with conservatives and will likely be introduced
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In the study, the authors found that older and low-income Californians who buy insurance on the individual market would have shouldered drastically higher costs for health premiums under the new act. Conversely, young and wealthier groups would have benefited.
"The American Health Care Act was a public health disaster and its defeat is a victory for all Americans," said
Gerald Kominski
, director of the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and co-author of the policy brief. "But the fight is not over. Those opposed to the ACA will continue to try to kill it by regulatory and other means."
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Three Questions for the Expert
Petra Rasmussen: "Just because the AHCA is gone for now does not mean that the fight is over."
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Petra Rasmussen is a doctoral student in health policy and management at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health and the co-author of a new Center study on how the American Health Care Act would have affected Californians. In this brief interview, Rasmussen talks about how the fight over health reform is not over, why Americans are confused about the existing law, and whether California could go single-payer.
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Recap: March 22 Paul Torrens Health Forum
UCLA experts predict demise of AHCA at March 22 forum
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Center Director Gerald Kominski speaking at the Paul Torrens Health Forum.
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Replacing the Affordable Care Act with the proposed American Health Care Act is a negative
shift in priorities that redistributes wealth at the expense of Americans' health, according to a lively panel discussion at a March 22 Paul Torrens
Health Forum, which took place two days before the bill was tabled.
Audience members gasped as
Gerald Kominski
, director of the
UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, described the replacement plan's steep cuts to Medicaid subsidies for low-income households and warned that the AHCA is "a huge mistake and a public health disaster." Kominski added that one positive result of the ACA repeal/replacement is the return of discussions about a single-payer health system.
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Center Faculty Associate Mark A. Peterson analyzes the proposed "three-prong" strategy.
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Alexander Li
, deputy director of systems integration at the Los Angeles County Health Agency, also noted the "opportunity" for health care innovation. He said although the country is in
a state of "anxiety... denial...and confusion" over the health care shift, the debate
creates an opportunity for California to set the stage for the future of health care. "We've
done things that other people haven't."
Mark A. Peterson, Center faculty associate and chair of the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, noted the proposed law's "significant redistribution of wealth back to the top" but also presciently predicted that the Republican party did not have the "traction" to advance the legislation. He said during a discussion of whether health care was a "right" or a "privilege" that most advanced economies and democracies provide their citizens with some type of health care program, except one -- "and that's us."
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Dynamic new online profiles with updated information for Building Healthy Communities participants
- Community Demographics
- Access to Care
- Health and Nutrition
- Food and Exercise
- Neighborhood
After viewing the categories, a user can select specific community charts, turn them into a report, and export the report as a pdf.
Building Healthy Communities (BHC) is a 10-year community initiative launched by
The California Endowment in 2010 to help improve 14 California communities most affected by health inequities. Information that compares 2009 BHC data with
2015 CHIS data will be available this summer.
Explore the data for Building Healthy Communities here.
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Center data and researchers were featured this month in dozens of media stories focused on the ACA repeal and its proposed replacement, the American Health Care Act, and more. Stories and opinion-editorials appeared in Bloomberg News, San Francisco Chronicle, Sacramento Bee, Los Angeles Times, El Nuevo Herald, Los Angeles Sentinel, KNX, KPCC-FM, SELF magazine, Vox and more
.
See all of our recent media in the Center's
Newsroom
.
SACRAMENTO BEE: Center Director
Gerald Kominski wrote in a
Sacramento Bee
op-ed column that the "public health disaster" that is Trumpcare will leave more groups worse off -- the poor and near-poor, Covered California enrollees, urban areas and most Northern Californians, baby boomers and taxpayers.
SELF: Associate Center Director Ninez Ponce said in a SELF Magazine story that the recent ICE raid at a hospital that targeted an undocumented patient awaiting surgery was ethically wrong, as well as a threat to public health. "Diseases have no borders."
BLOOMBERG NEWS:
Associate Center Director
Steven P. Wallace
said in a Bloomberg News
story
that policy discussions that once focused on providing services to improve the health of immigrants have now changed with the new administration to eliminating those services.
LOS ANGELES TIMES
: In a Los Angeles Times
column
about potential changes to California's health care system under the new presidential administration,
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Center Director Gerald Kominski said that Medicaid block grants "are a poison pill. They're a slow-acting poison that cuts off your health care funds." In another Times story, Kominski discussed the concept of having a single-payer health care system in California.
Any funding cuts under the proposed health care bill will hurt community health centers, the main source of primary care for low-income populations, said
Steven P. Wallace
, associate Center director, in a separate
Times story
. Wallace said the hit could be two-fold: Less money comes in as patients lose insurance, but more newly uninsured patients will need treatment.
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE, SACRAMENTO BEE, VOX:
Center Director of Research
Nadereh Pourat
said in the
San Francisco Chronicle that the proposed law will not only "take us back to where we were (before the ACA), but it's going to take us somewhere we've never been."
Pourat was also interviewed on the ACA replacement plan in the
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LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS:
Research
on how repeal of the ACA would affect Californians by UC Berkeley and the
Center
was cited in a
Los Angeles Daily News story
about LA County Supervisors Mark Ridley-Thomas and Sheila Kuehl filing a motion asking county administrators to study financial options to continue subsidized government health care.
CALIFORNIA HEALTHLINE:
Parents who speak only Spanish are half as likely to feel that their doctors listen to them as Latino parents who speak English, according to a
study
featured in a
California Healthline
story that was republished in dozens of media, including
Los Angeles Daily News
,
Whittier Daily News
,
San Bernardino Sun
,
Long Beach Press Telegram
,
Pasadena Star-News
,
Albany Democrat-Herald
,
El Nuevo Herald
,
El Sol,
Excelsior
. The study used data from the
California Health Interview Survey (CHIS)
.
NEW AMERICA MEDIA:
Safety net providers in the San Joaquin Valley are encouraging Medi-Cal beneficiaries in immigrant communities to stay enrolled in the health program, despite ongoing concerns over federal deportations and the ACA repeal, according to a
story
in New America Media. The story cites a
recent Center study
on potential regional effects of the ACA repeal.
HUFFINGTON POST:
California Health Interview Survey (CHIS)
was cited in a
H
uffington Post
article about how fresh produce is available but too expensive for low-income residents in California's Central Valley, who lack transportation to reach grocery stores that have cheaper prices.
LOS ANGELES SENTINEL: A Center project, the
UCLA-S.A.F.E. Smokefree Apartments Los Angeles, was cited in a Los Angeles Sentinel story about smoke-free housing in Los Angeles.
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News and notes
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| CHIS Project Coordinator Bogdau Rau shows the Sacramento legislative community how to use AskCHIS. |
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UCLA ANDERSON, LABOR UNITED: Center Director
Gerald Kominski
moderated a panel discussion "California's Health Exchanges: Where Do We Go From Here?" at the 3rd UCLA Anderson Healthcare Conference March 11. Panelists included State Senator Holly Mitchell; Baram Kasravi, chief medical officer of Anthem's Medicaid program; and Jack Kurihara, director of strategic development at UCLA Medical Center.
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Carmencita David Padilla, chancellor of the University of the Philippines Manila, and Associate Center Director Ninez Ponce
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Center Associate Director
Ninez Ponce
hosted a Filipino delegation from the Council of Higher Education at the Center on Feb. 27
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"HIDDEN POOR" DISCUSSION AT TIMES BOOK FESTIVAL: Associate Center Director Steven P. Wallace will be part of a panel discussion "Nonfiction: California's Hidden Poor" moderated by Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez April 23 at the free Los Angeles Times Book Festival in Los Angeles. Co-panelists are authors Susan Straight and Susan B. Geffen.
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TRUMP, ACA PRESENTATIONS: Mark A. Peterson, Center faculty associate and chair of the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, had several speaking engagements centered on President Trump and repeal of the ACA.
He gave the keynote speech "President Trump, Congress, and the Future of Federal Health Policy" Feb. 19 at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Pacific Coast Surgical Association in Indian Wells, Calif., and focused on health care in his presentation, "The Trump Administration After Two Months: The Issues," for a panel at UCLA Center for American Politics and Public Policy on March 13.
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Peterson |
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On March 22, Peterson was a panelist at the Paul Torrens Health Forum "ACA Repeal and Replace: What's the Latest?"
SMALL AREA ESTIMATION SEMINAR: Center Associate Director
Ninez Ponce and
Yueyan Wang, assistant director of the Center's statistical unit, presented "Surveys and Small Area Estimation: Complementary Strategies to Measure the Health of Populations" March 30 as part of the RCMAR Center for Health Improvement of Minority Elderly (CHIME) methodology series.
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WE ARE HIRING: The UCLA Fielding School of Public health has a tenured faculty position open for an associate/full professor of health equity. The Center has an opening for a CHIS data quality & survey methodology manager. Find more information
here.
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ABOUT US
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One of the nation's leading health policy research centers and the premier source of health-related information on Californians. Browse our free publications on health insurance, health care reform, health economics, chronic disease, health disparities and more at:
www.healthpolicy.ucla.edu
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 CHIS is the nation's largest state health survey and one of the largest health surveys in the United States. Every two years, CHIS interviews up to 50,000 or more Californians on a range of health topics. Visit us at:
www.chis.ucla.edu
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 A free, easy-to-use online tool that enables journalists, health experts, policymakers and others to quickly search for health statistics on their county, region or statewide. Visit us at:
www.askchis.com
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