The Affordable Care Act May Have Helped Americans Live Longer
Source: Investopedia, Diccon Hyatt
Photo: Patients wait in the lobby at the St. David’s South Austin Medical Center on September 03, 2026, in Austin, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
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Key Takeaways
The Affordable Care Act, sometimes called Obamacare, saved lives by extending health insurance to people who previously didn’t have it, a new study shows.
Mortality fell by somewhere between 23% and 45% among middle-aged people who lacked health insurance at the time of its introduction.
One of the major life-saving innovations in Medicine in the early 2010s wasn’t a new medicine or procedure, but a healthcare law.
The landmark Affordable Care Act healthcare legislation, signed into law by former President Barack Obama in 2010, reduced mortality by 23% and 45%, depending on the group studied, Researchers at the University of Chicago found in a working paper published Monday at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
The study tracked people aged 40 through 58 who were surveyed between 2010 and 2013 and examined whether they had died by 2019. The study found that people who were uninsured at the time the law went into effect in 2014 were far less likely to die than they would have been otherwise, largely due to becoming insured and gaining access to health care.
The law was most effective at reducing causes of death that can be prevented by regular healthcare, such as heart diseases, respiratory diseases, diabetes, and other ailments that doctors can treat.
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The research sheds light on the effectiveness of government-subsidized health insurance programs, potentially affecting future debates about health care policy.
If the findings hold up to scrutiny, they would attest to the legislation’s success in its intended purpose of providing health care to people who had previously been uninsured. The legislation established publicly subsidized healthcare exchanges that allowed people to purchase policies from private companies at discounted premiums, and forbade insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing conditions.
Interestingly, the study found the ACA reduced mortality, but the expansion of Medicaid, the government’s health care program for people with low incomes, had no effect.
Before the latest findings, data showed the ACA was effective at reducing the percentage of people who went without health insurance, which has nearly halved since 2010, when 17.8% of people under 64 were uninsured.
However, recent changes to the ACA have significantly reduced the number of people who benefit from the program.
Enrollment in ACA plans fell by 2.9 million in 2026 to 19.2 million, its lowest since 2023, after Congress allowed a pandemic-era subsidy to expire, causing premiums to rise for many enrollees.
The Trump administration said the decrease was due to stricter fraud controls, but some health care experts say it’s more likely because many people could no longer afford their plans.
https://www.investopedia.com/affordable-care-act-obamacare-saved-lives-research-shows