PRC Researcher Daniel Polsky on the Economics of the Affordable Care Act

  PRC Researcher Daniel Polsky, PhD, MPP, and other Senior Fellows at the Leonard Davis Institute at the University of Pennsylvania weigh in on the economic and policy issues surrounding changes to the Affordable Care Act.

In analyzing new legislation passed by the House of Representatives, Polsky says “the bill creates a host of other economic problems. Insurance becomes even less affordable for the old, sick, and low-income.”

Racial Disparities in Access to Primary Care: PRC Researchers David Grande and Daniel Polsky

In the August issue of Health Affairs, UPenn PRC Researchers David Grande, MD, MPA, and Daniel Polsky, Ph.D, investigate racial disparities in spatial accessibility of primary care among different neighborhoods in the city of Philadelphia.  Noting that “areas of the city with high percentages of African Americans or Hispanics were likely to also be areas with poor primary care spatial accessibility” and that ” people who live in those areas might be forced to travel farther or wait longer, which creates additional barriers to primary care,” Grande and Polsky show similarities between their research and research on food deserts – neighborhoods which have limited access to healthy food.  This study furthers research on neighborhood health risk and how the built environment impacts the health status of different urban populations.

 

 

 

Daniel Polsky: ACA & Access to Care in the Sunday NYTimes

In a New York Times Sunday Review article on the growing pains of the Affordable Care Act, Daniel Polsky is cited for advancing research into how the health care law affects patients’ access to care. “We hear lots of complaints, but we really don’t know the extent of the problem because there’s still very little data,” the article quotes Polsky.

Polsky is collecting such data in the Narrow Networks Project for the purpose of analyzing the access patterns of the health coverage offered by insurers participating in the ACA’s exchanges or marketplaces across the country. Dr. Polsky is a PRC Researcher and Executive Director of Penn’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics.