title: The Affordable Care Act's preventive services mandate: breaking down the barriers to nationwide access to preventive services.
abstract: The Affordable Care Act (ACA) transforms the U.S.'s public and private health care financing systems into vehicles for promoting public health by making evidence-based preventive services available nationwide through individual and group health plans, Medicare, and Medicaid. The ACA accomplishes this transformation by breaking down two barriers: (1) the public health-health care divide, which led to a dominance of curative medicine over preventive health measures and (2) ERISA preemption, which created an obstacle to the provision of a uniform set of evidence-based preventive services that could be made available to the U.S. population through individual and group health plans. As a result, prevention measures with proven effectiveness will now be provided on a national and uniform basis to a majority of Americans, with the potential to improve health outcomes and reduce costs.
authors.affiliation: Pennsylvania State University, Dickinson School of Law, PA, USA.
authors.forename: John Aloysius
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Cogan
mesh_terms: D019461:Employee Retirement Income Security Act; D018166:Health Care Reform / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D019458:Insurance Coverage / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence*; D037141:Mandatory Programs / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D058991:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; D011057:Politics; D011314:Preventive Health Services / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence / Q000458:organization & administration*; D011634:Public Health / Q000331:legislation & jurisprudence; D014481:United States