On 5th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, Rep. Johnson highlights benefits to Georgia

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Rep. Johnson announced that, on the 5th anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, a new report shows that hundreds of thousands of people in Georgia are benefiting from this landmark health care law.

“Over the last five years since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, millions of Americans have been seeing the benefits of the law, including lower costs and better coverage,” Rep. Johnson said. “This includes hundreds of thousands of people in Georgia.”

Five years after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, it is clear that the Affordable Care Act is working:

• Improving Coverage: Nationwide, since the enactment of the Affordable Care Act, 16.4 million previously uninsured Americans have secured affordable, quality health coverage.
• Improving Affordability: Since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, health care prices have risen at the slowest rate in nearly 50 years. Thanks to exceptionally slow growth in per-person costs throughout our health care system, national health expenditures grew at the slowest rate on record from 2010 through 2013.
• Improving Quality: The Affordable Care Act has helped improve the quality of health care, contributing to 50,000 fewer patient deaths in hospitals due to avoidable harms, like an infection or medication error.

Today, a new report was released by HHS that shows all the different ways in which the people in the state of Georgia are benefiting from the Affordable Care Act. Following are some of the key findings in that report:

• Drop in uninsured rate in Georgia under the ACA. Due to the ACA, the uninsured rate in Georgia has fallen from 21.4 percent in 2013 to 19.1 percent in 2014.
• Marketplace coverage of individuals in Georgia. For 2015, more than 541,000 consumers are enrolled in quality, affordable health insurance coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace in Georgia. 92 percent of those enrolled qualified for a tax credit that will help them afford their coverage.
• Medicaid/CHIP coverage for additional individuals in Georgia. As of January 2015, 188,943 individuals in Georgia have gained Medicaid or CHIP coverage since the beginning of ACA enrollment in October 2013. If Georgia expanded Medicaid, an additional 478,000 uninsured people would gain coverage.
• Savings in premiums for individuals in Georgia. The ACA contains provisions that prevent insurers from spending more than 20% of their premiums on profits and administrative overhead. Because of these protections, 304,940 individuals in Georgia with private insurance coverage have benefited from more than $11 million in refunds from insurance companies.
• Elimination of lifetime limits on coverage for individuals in Georgia. Since September 2010, the health care law has prohibited insurers from placing a lifetime limit on coverage. As a result, in Georgia, 3.3 million people, including 1.2 million women and 916,000 children, are now free from worrying about lifetime limits on coverage.
• Protection for individuals with pre-existing conditions in Georgia. Since January 2014, the health care law has prohibited insurers from denying coverage to individuals for having a pre-existing health condition. Because of this provision, more than 4 million individuals in Georgia with pre-existing conditions are being protected from denial of coverage.
• Expanded access to free preventive services for individuals in private plans in Georgia. Since September 2010, the health care law has provided, for those enrolled in most private plans, expanded access to free preventive services. As a result, 2.3 million individuals in private plans in Georgia now have health insurance that covers preventive services without any co-pays, coinsurance, or deductible.
• Lower drug costs for seniors in Georgia. The health care law is providing major savings in drug costs for seniors in the Medicare Part D ‘donut hole’ because the law closes the ‘donut hole’ over 10 years. Because of this provision, since the enactment of the ACA, seniors in Georgia have saved a total of $420 million on their prescription drugs.
• Free preventive services for seniors in Georgia. Under the ACA, beginning in 2011, Medicare now provides free coverage of key preventive services, such as mammograms and colonoscopies. In 2014 alone, because of this provision, 1.1 million seniors and people with disabilities enrolled in Medicare in Georgia used one or more free preventive services.

“Republicans continue to call for the complete repeal of the Affordable Care Act,” Rep. Johnson concluded. “Instead we should all be working together to successfully implement the health care law. Due to the law, millions of Americans have gained new access to quality, affordable health care coverage and also have critical protections, which prevents discrimination for having a pre-existing condition. I will keep fighting to fully implement the law and ensure that my constituents have the health security and economic security they deserve.”

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