Affordable Care Act

President Barack Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) into law on March 23, 2010.  Some provisions of the PPACA were implemented immediately, while others are implementing incrementally through 2014. There are three main goals of the PPACA: 1) decreasing costs of health care and insurance to consumers; 2) improving the quality of health care services; and most importantly, 3) increasing access to health care for Americans without it.

• Improves private market reforms including ending lifetime and most annual limits for health insurance coverage, increases transparency about how insurers use consumer's premium dollars and eliminates discrimination by insurers based on an individual's pre-existing conditions.
   

• Strengthens the U.S. safety-net and public health benefits programs, including investments in primary care provider training and placements, expansion of public health coverage to more low-income Americans and investments in community health centers.
   

• Creates new insurance marketplaces in each state, known as Exchanges. These competitive marketplaces will provide individuals and small businesses protections when buying their insurance, including defining what services plans have to cover so people can make an apples-to-apples comparison of plans when shopping. The exchanges will also help lower and middle class Americans without insurance cover the costs of their insurance with federal subsidies.
   

• Helps young adults access health insurance coverage by allowing them to stay on their parents' plans until they turn 26. Five hundred thousand more young adults have health insurance coverage because of this provision as of September 2011.
   

• Invests in projects and programs to reduce wasteful spending and fraud in the nation's public programs, including Medicaid and Medicare. 
   

• Provides help to small businesses with lower income employees in the form of a tax credit for those who provide insurance to their employees.
   

• Decreases costs to seniors on Medicare by closing the prescription drug coverage gap (known as the "Doughnut Hole") by 2012.  Also decreases costs by reducing prescription drug costs in general for seniors.

How Has the Affordable Care Act Benefited Colorado?

• 973,000 people in Colorado received at least one free preventative service in 2011 through their private health insurance. (362K women, 259K kids, 352K men)
• 381,575 people in Colorado with Medicare received at least one free preventative service in 2011
• 39,476 seniors in Colorado with Medicare who hit the "donut hole" saved an average of $579/person in 2011.
• HHS Health Care Fraud and Abuse Program saved taxpayers a total of $4.1 billion in 2011
• Average health insurance premium increase for Colorado in 2012 was under 10% for the first time in almost 10 years.
• Medicare Advantage health insurance premiums decreased 7%.
• 2.5 million young adults have been able to remain on their parents’ insurance plan, including an estimated 22,000 18-25 year-olds in Colorado

Check out our new campaign to educate people about the Affordable Care Act: www.thanksobamacare.org.

For more information on the law and its implementation, please visit www.healthcare.gov.

Also check out county specific ACA coverage fact sheets below.