Access to Care

Background

In order to benefit from health care services, people need to be able to access them. Affordability and lack of insurance can be major barriers to accessing needed care in the United States. The Affordable Care Act has made significant progress in reducing the number of people who are uninsured, but major challenges remain to providing access to care. Additional barriers to access also prevent individuals from obtaining necessary prescription drugs, mental and behavioral health services, reproductive health care, and can disproportionately impact immigrants and other vulnerable populations.

Advocacy Spotlight

Health Care During Incarceration
In this policy paper, ACP calls for improved access and quality in health care for the U.S. jail and prison population.

 

Where We Stand

The American College of Physicians has a long-standing goal of increasing access to care in the United States. We support the goals of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and advocated for its passage. We continue to advocate for improvements to the law as we also advocate for comprehensive reforms to achieve universal coverage, including consideration of a single payer of a public option, so that no one lacks affordable coverage. We support efforts to help control the rising cost of prescription drugs and other health care services. We support increased availability and coverage for mental and behavioral health services. We support access to reproductive health care. And, we support protecting access to care for immigrants to the United States.

Access to Care Recommendations

ACP Offers Recommendations to Improve the Affordable Care Act

ACP offers recommendations to improve the Affordable Care Act to lay the foundation for health care reforms that will lead to universal coverage for all Americans in a new policy paper published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Watch Video

Latest Advocacy Efforts

Search the ACP Policy Library

Access everything ACP has said related to access to care issues by searching all policy statements, copies of testimony, and letters to government and non-government officials.

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Access to Care

Additional Advocacy Efforts