 |
The
findings come as the administration of President Donald Trump is renewing its
efforts to strike down the Affordable Care Act signed into law by his
predecessor
Barack Obama (seen) (AFP Photo/Juan BARRETO)
|
The findings come as the administration of President Donald Trump is renewing its efforts to strike down the Affordable Care Act signed into law by his predecessor Barack Obama (seen) (AFP Photo/Juan BARRETO)
Chicago
(AFP) - A pair of studies have found that Obamacare led to an increase in
early-stage ovarian cancer detections and helped nearly erase racial
differences in the timely treatment of a range of cancers.
The
findings, which were presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology
annual meeting in Chicago, come as the administration of President Donald Trump
is renewing its efforts to strike down the Affordable Care Act signed into law
by his predecessor Barack Obama.
The study
on ovarian cancer screening was led by Anna Jo Smith at the Johns Hopkins
Department of Gynecology and Obstetrics in Baltimore.
"Having
health insurance plays a major role in whether or not a woman has access to
care providers who can monitor symptoms and act on those symptoms if
necessary,"she said.
The
five-year survival rate for women diagnosed with early-stage ovarian cancer is
75 percent, but the figure drops dramatically to 30 percent for those diagnosed
at a later stage.
The ACA was
signed into law on March 2010, and by 2016-17, some 12.7 million people were
covered under the law.
The
percentage of Americans who were uninsured dropped from 16 percent in 2010 to
less than 12 percent by 2016.
The
researchers used data from the National Cancer Database to look at the years
before (2004-2009) and after (2011-2014) the passing of the ACA.
They looked
at the stage of the diagnosis and the time to treatment for the 21 to 64 age
group, and compared it to those 65 and older, which was used as a control group
because they had access to publicly funded Medicare before and after.
They found
that there was a relative gain of 1.7 percent in early-stage diagnosis and a
1.6 percent improvement in receiving treatment within 30 days.
The team
wrote in a statement: "While a 1.7% difference in being diagnosed earlier
may not sound very large, for the 22,000 women diagnosed with ovarian cancer in
the United States annually, it means that close to 400 more women could be
diagnosed at an early, treatable stage."
Racial
differences erased
The second
paper on Obamacare found that differences between whites and blacks in timely
care "practically disappeared" following the passage of the law.
Two key
provisions of the ACA were granting states permission to expand public funded
Medicaid coverage to low-income citizens starting in 2014, and providing
subsidies to those who could not afford to buy private insurance if they did
not qualify for Medicaid.
The study
looked at the records of 2.2 million people diagnosed with advanced cancers
including non-small cell lung cancer, breast, urothelial, gastric and
esophageal, colorectal, renal cell, prostate, and melanoma cancers.
"Prior
to Medicaid expansion, African American patients were 4.8 percentage points
less likely to receive timely treatment as compared with white patients,"
the researchers wrote.
After the
ACA was passed, 6.1 percent more blacks received timely treatment as well as
2.1 percent of whites, making the differences between the races statistically
insignificant.
"Many
studies have described racial disparities that exist in cancer care, but few
have shown what types of interventions improve health equity -- we now have
evidence that Medicaid expansion can mitigate certain health disparities,"
said study author Amy J. Davidoff at the Yale School of Public Health.
Trump's
Justice Department announced in March an abrupt escalation in the
administration's push against Obamacare by siding with a Texas federal court
ruling that declared the health care law unconstitutional.
That ruling
is currently being appealed and the resulting impasse looks increasingly likely
to end up in the Supreme Court -- putting a politically radioactive issue
center stage as the country moves towards the 2020 presidential election.
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