"By expanding Medicaid, a very large safety net health insurance program, and by including mental health and substance abuse coverage as essential benefits that must be covered at "parity" with other conditions, the Affordable Care Act greatly increased behavioral health treatment possibilities for African Americans and other low income populations. However, despite strong financial incentives to accept Medicaid expansion, about one third of states rejected it. African Americans are notably overrepresented in states rejecting Medicaid expansion, and there are theoretical and empirical reasons to believe that residents' and policy makers' explicit and implicit bias played some role in this rejection. We can rigorously investigate how psychologist's theories of bias, In conjunction with sociologist's theories of "undeserving poor" and political scientist's theories of race-based politics and voting, lead to less behavioral health treatment access for African Americans and to increasing African American vs White disparities."