Over 528,000 Americans have signed up for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in the six weeks of the special enrollment timeline that President Joe Biden opened, Black Enterprise reported.
According to theGrio, African American Ambassador Susan Rice said 17%, or about 90,000 new ACA enrollees are Black Americans. There are also major surges in signups with low-income Americans and among states with high numbers of uninsured Americans, the article stated.
In Florida and Texas (two states with the highest group of uninsured Americans) over 146,000 and 98,000 residents signed up.
The coronavirus pandemic revealed serious inequities in America’s healthcare system — and many already know when white people catch a cold, Black people get pneumonia, as the saying goes. Millions of people have already lost their health insurance, coupled with their jobs when over 1,000 people were dying per day.
But there is hope. Shortly after Biden was sworn in as president earlier this year, he set forth a special enrollment period to sign up for health coverage through the ACA. Biden recently extended the enrollment period through Aug. 15, per the article.
A study of the ACA from 2010 through 2018 shows people of color have made “significant gains in ACA coverage,” which has lessened the major disparities in coverage, according to the article. The huge strides in health coverage for people of color will more than likely lead to reductions in disparities in the healthcare system and down the road.
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