Health Care Gap Analysis

The ACA’s progress in expanding the health care industry to include various incomes levels comes leaves room for errors. For the purpose of this paper I have chosen to focus on the poor working class gap left due to the federal decision to leave states with the option to expand Medicaid. When the expansion was initially announced in 2010 24 of the 50 states opted out of the Medicaid expansion. As of September 2015, 20 states were not expanding their programs. Individuals and families that fall within this gap further are limited as they disqualify, for financial purpose, for federal subsidy (Geyman, 2015). 90% of those individuals and families that fall within this coverage gap reside in southern states and over half are between the ages of
Research has indicated that of the individuals within 133% of the federal poverty limit 18.8% to 29.5% had “probable depression” and “19.%-29.9% had serious psychological distress”. Additionally, higher rates of substance abuse disorders have been found to exist among those individuals “who may” gain insurance under ACA with far fewer receiving treatment for such illnesses (Mark, T., Wier, L., Penne, K., & Cowell, A.
In this model primary care provides mental health needs for mild conditions with support from mental health specialists (Cummings, (2015). Studies have shown that this type of intervention, consisting of six components, are effective for outcomes across mental health conditions (Woltmann, Grogan-Kaylor, Perron, Hebert, & Kilbourne, (2012) . In a study by Jones, Cochran, Leibowitz, Wells, & Kominski (2015), patients who were seen in a patient care medical home were more likely to receive mental health counseling with a mental health specialist than those seeing a “usual