title:  4 Insanely Great Ways One Idea From Obama Just Made Life Amazing For Millions Of Americans
text: The New York Times has done a major new study on the effects of the Affordable Care Act   aka Obamacare   on the lives of Americans. The Times analyzed what happened in the first full year of the implementation of Obamacare between 2013 and 2014, and the results are mind-blowing in how they ve fundamentally altered the lives of some of the most vulnerable Americans for the better.The first full year of the Affordable Care Act brought historic increases in coverage for low-wage workers and others who have long been left out of the health care system, a New York Times analysis has found.Remember, Obamacare passed without a single Republican vote in the House or Senate, and has survived two Supreme Court challenges and other court challenges made up by the obstructionist Right. The last Republican presidential nominee ran on a platform of repealing it, and so has every GOP presidential candidate running this year.Obamacare has also survived dozens of Republican votes to repeal it, while six years later the GOP has still not offered a plan to replace it.After the passage of Obamacare, the amount of people insured in every slice of America went up in a major way. Between 2013 and 2014, this is how much those increases were, as a percentage:For decades the gap between the wealthy and poor on access to health care has been steadily growing wider and wider. But after the passage of Obamacare, that gap has stopped growing. It s the one area where inequality has actually been halted in its tracks:Nevertheless, the Times s analysis shows that by the end of that first full year, 2014, so many low-income people gained coverage that it halted the decades-long expansion of the gap between the haves and the have-nots in the American health insurance system, a striking change at a time when disparities between rich and poor are growing in many areas.Here s an infographic from the Times illustrating this amazing moment in American health care: Policies like Obamacare are just abstract ideas until they are implemented. But now we have one concrete example of what happens in just one city thanks to Obamacare. The St. John s Well Child and Family Center in South Los Angeles explained that 18,000 new patients were enrolled thanks to the new law   mostly black and Latino people who didn t have insurance before. The clinic has reported a 44% increase in cervical cancer screenings, 25% increase in tobacco cessastion therapy, and a 22% increase in the share of patients who now have their hypertension under control.That s in one clinic in one city.All of these improvements have happened even though Republicans have refused to expand Medicaid in many of their states, even with assistance in the form of federal dollars. That s why the law has helped far fewer blacks than it could have because blacks, especially in the south, tend to live in GOP-dominated states like Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi.Imagine if instead of stubbornly refusing to help Obama, those red states bought in and brought the kind of health care revolution being felt in that Los Angeles clinic to hundreds of thousands more people?Featured image via Flickr