How Affordable Health Insurance Improved the Lives of Single People
The chances of being insured, getting married, and having babies all changed after the Affordable Care Act was passed
Those of us who are single are stuck putting up with the stereotyping and stigmatizing that I call singlism. Tell someone you are single and from knowing just that one thing about you, many people will immediately assume that you are miserable, lonely, self-centered, and immature. They would be wrong about all of that, as research shows.
Stereotyping is hardly the worst component of singlism. People who are single are also disadvantaged in important ways — for example, in their access to health insurance.
Since Obamacare Was Enacted, Fewer Single People Are Going without Health Insurance
In some countries, access to health care comes with citizenship or residency. That doesn’t happen in the United States, where many have no health insurance and there are substantial inequalities across groups. For a long time, unmarried Americans have been among the groups least likely to have health insurance. In a study published in 2018 in the American Sociological Review, public policy professor Carmen Gutierrez of the…
