Inequality in health care persists at the state level, especially in red states with diverse populations

In March 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which marked the most comprehensive reform of the American health care system since the Johnson Administration. This federal legislation makes the American states key political stakeholders for achieving major goals of the reform, one of which is to make health insurance coverage more inclusive and equal. Focusing on the state-level picture, Ling Zhu and Jennifer H. Clark examine how partisan politics produce far-reaching distributional consequences in health care. They show that inequality in health insurance coverage persists at the state level, especially in conservative states with diverse populations.