Affordable Care Act Pros And Cons

Affordable Care Act and the Benefits on Nursing

In 2010 the American government created and implemented the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This plan was an insurance reform and was meant to ensure all Americans of being covered and prevent pre-existing conditions from limiting your coverage. There are other things that the ACA helps with as well. There are benefits to this act and negatives just like with any implementation of a plan. There are positives and negatives from nurses, patients, doctors and family members of these people. This act has been described as affordable, realistic, and genius but others tend to feel much different about it, almost opposite of what was said. I will be expressing both sides of the ACA as well as defining it

In a nursing journal I found the work of a Michigan nurse “Employers use ACA as excuse for staffing cuts” (Michigan nurse, 2013). Staffing is the main complaint from nurses and because the ACA is bringing in more money for the hospitals, the hospitals are trying to get as much money as they can. More people insured means more people going to the doctor and the hospital. This cutting costs and staff is a big negative for nurses. How are nurses supposed to have great patient care when they have ten patients? “And even though hospitals with high rates of preventable readmissions will be punished with lower Medicare rates, they refuse to do what needs to be done to prevent that, which is investing in better nurse staffing” (Michigan nurse,2013 )The hospitals are making compromises because of the ACA but not in the right direction. “The huge compromises made simply perpetuated a broken system that is overly complicated and expensive” (Michigan nurse,2013). The ACA was supposed to make things simpler but they in fact make things more difficult to

ACOs are groups of health care providers that come together and organize high quality care to Medicare patients. This could mean that they are groups of doctors, hospitals, and other health care providers. These ACOs could mean more evenly distributed patients throughout health care providers and mean less number of patients on one person. It could mean more special care. There needs to be a way we can implement the ACA and have no hospitals trying to get rich off of the other. We are patient advocates and the patient always comes first. The ACA means well but has a lot of teaching and reaching out to do. They also need to have more ways to gets the insurance and make it understandable and what the consequences are of not having it. ACOs can spread the word and make it easier for people to ask questions and get advice. The idea of ACA means well but it needs to be modified. Nurses have a little more freedom with this change and maybe patient care will get