What has the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act done?
The Americans with Disabilities Act was passed in 1990 to provide civil rights protections to people with disabilities and to require that employers provide reasonable accommodations for workers with disabilities. There is some controversy about the extent to which it has been effective. The law’s purpose, of course, was to expand opportunities to people with disabilities by increasing access to appropriate accommodations in the workplace. But some research points to such unintended consequences as increased costs to employers and even the threat of litigation, which may have made employers less likely to hire them. Because of fluctuations in programs and the economy in the decade after passage, the extent of these unintended consequences is difficult to assess. The research is mixed. 4. How does health insurance factor into these trends? As you might suspect, health costs can be considerable for people with disabilities, especially those with chronic conditions. So health insurance ca
