In “Data Mine,” US News & World Report (5/4, Leonard) reports, “People with psychological problems have been increasingly gaining health insurance coverage in recent years,” particularly since the passage of the Affordable Care Act. Now, “data in a study released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” in a National Center for Health Statistics Data Brief “raise questions about whether they are also receiving medical care.”
MedPage Today (5/4, Fiore) reports that after analyzing data from the National Health Interview Survey, researchers found that “the number of uninsured adults ages 18 to 64 fell from 28.1% in 2012 to 19.5% in first 9 months of 2015.” No change was seen, however, “in the proportion of adults with serious psychological distress who had a usual place to go for medical care or who had talked to a healthcare” professional in the past 12 months. Those findings were even “worse for mental healthcare specifically – the proportion of distressed adults who had seen a mental health professional in the past year fell during that time, from about 42% to 34%,” researchers found.
Related Links:
— “Here’s What Obamacare Did for Mental Health,” Kimberly Leonard, US News & World Report, May 4, 2016.