Healing alone: how social capital reduces health care inequality, particularly in large diverse states

Since the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), millions of low-income Americans have gained access to publicly funded health insurance. Yet, the American states have remained critical stakeholders in the Trump era for fighting persistently high levels of inequality in access to health care. Using data from the fifty states, Ling Zhu examines trends in market-based health care inequality in the past two decades, and finds that health care inequalities are greater the more racially diverse a state, and smaller in states with higher levels of social capital.