Research Symposium

BIO

I am a Junior here at Florida State University, part of the UROP program. I am majoring in Finance with a deep passion for the law. After graduating with my finance degree, I plan on getting my MBA as well as going to law school. I plan on shifting my research focus in the future into the world of patents and intellectual property.

A Comprehensive Evaluation of the ACA Exchanges, Racial-Ethnic Considerations

Abstract

The Affordable Care Act established state-level marketplaces in which individuals could obtain health insurance coverage. This project evaluated the performance of these state marketplaces - aka health insurance exchanges - after 10 years of operation. We compared differences across state in various characteristics, such as enrollment and health plan competition, and developed a repository for research literature that addresses various outcomes of these mechanisms. Our main objective was to identify features associated with the success of the marketplaces in providing health insurance and, consequently, necessary health care services, to the population. Tasks included literature reviews, data collection, preparing data visualizations (graphs), and some analysis of the data. Data was analyzed with the applications Excel and Stata. From the data we have collected from the Office of Health Policy analyzing the makeup of enrollees in the federal healthcare.gov marketplace, an overall increase at the national level has been observed in the number of minorities joining the healthcare.gov marketplace. The percentages of racial-ethnic makeup appears to have differences compared to national levels, particularly among Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander and Multiracial. Through the preliminary data we have collected, we have been able to observe changes from state to state and county to county, but further research must be conducted on possible explanations for these differences such as unemployment rate, income rates, and age makeup

Keywords: ACA, Insurance, Exchanges, Obamacare