When Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, its authors cited three overarching goals: to improve access to health care, to slow rising medical costs and to improve health outcomes.
One of the main vehicles for achieving all three missions was a requirement that health insurers provide preventive health care services at no cost to patients. If there were no financial barriers, backers argued, patients would be more likely to get preventive services, from colonoscopies to vaccines to heart disease screenings, which would help keep people healthier and out of the hospital and, consequently, lower health care costs.
As a result of that requirement, more than 150 million Americans now have access to scores of preventive health measures at no cost, sparing many from illness and catching diseases early for others.
