The impact of the ACA on improving the health of Latinos depends on the extent of the uptake of ACA health insurance among eligible Latinos, continued investment in improving health care delivery systems that serve high proportions of US Latinos (such as FQHCs and other CHCs), and the strength and coordination of efforts to reduce the disparities experienced by Latinos in gaining access to and receiving high-quality preventive care and care for chronic illnesses. The uneven implementation of the ACA across states, particularly in those states with high proportions of Latinos or high rates of Latino immigration, or both, presents an important opportunity to conduct natural experiments of the impact of the ACA on Latinos’ access to health care and its quality, and patients’ experiences.
Our review highlights four important health-policy dilemmas that must be faced to improve health and health care among Latino populations in the United States. First, extending health insurance coverage to undocumented immigrants, although politically challenging, can narrow the disparities and improve utilization and access. Importantly, including undocumented Latinos in health insurance markets will improve the case-mix of insurance pools, thereby improving the stability of the insurance market and future premiums. At the same time that insurance expands, federal resources that enable safety-net clinics and public hospitals to continue providing care for those who are uninsured will erode and the availability of a safety net for undocumented Latinos remains uncertain. Second, the new growth of the Latino population is heavily concentrated in states that have limited the expansion of their health-insurance coverage as part of the ACA. Existing health disparities among Latinos in these areas may worsen over time, and the impacts of limiting expansion should be monitored. Third, the ACA will allow more previously uninsured patients to receive health care in private settings. These settings may not be equipped initially to handle the linguistic and health needs of the Latino population because of the few supportive services available to patients in these settings. Future research should evaluate how Latinos fare compared with other groups in settings without on-site language services and social services, and this should be compared with the care received in CHCs and from other providers who traditionally care for Latinos. Fourth, the health of Latinos will be affected by the effectiveness of ongoing and future efforts to diversify the health care workforce. Although the proportion of physicians who are Latino has not significantly changed since the 1980s, the expansion and professionalization of Latino medical providers, other nonclinician providers, and community health workers and medical assistants in primary care settings may open up opportunities for professional development for a large workforce of Latinos during the coming decade. As we are confronted with these dilemmas, it will be important to incentivize local public health delivery systems to develop, test, and scale up solutions to improve the health outcomes of Latinos and to reduce health disparities.