Overview of the Affordable Care Act's Impact on Military and Veteran Mental Health Services: Nine Implications for Significant Improvements in Care

Abstract

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) into law. Implications of the ACA on mental health care for 9.7 million military active-duty, reserve, and family members and 22.2 million veterans, as well as 1.3 uninsured veterans, is reviewed in light of a major crisis. The authors trace historical roots of the ACA to the World War II generation and efforts to transform the mental health care system by implementing hard-won war trauma lessons. The authors posit 9 principles reflected in the ACA that represent unfulfilled generational war trauma lessons and potential transformation of the military and national mental health care systems.

KEYWORDS:

• access
• ADA
• brain injury
• community mental health
• community mental health practice
• disability
• evidence-based practice
• health care
• health promotion
• trauma
• veterans