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Health Care Reform Essay

719 Words3 Pages

Up until 2010, low-income families or those with chronic illnesses faced barriers to obtaining access to health insurance in America. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) changed that by legislating health insurance options for millions of people who were lacking affordable health coverage. In this discussion board, I will discuss how the ACA relates to access, equity, quality, and cost. I will also look at what health care reform means to the uninsured and underinsured, what the impact is of limited access to vulnerable populations, and what nurses can do to increase the awareness of civil rights in health care.
While the ACA, itself, does not guarantee an individual’s access to health care, it does improve the health coverage of most of the country’s citizens, expands insurance options to most Americans, and dramatically increases the number of American’s with insurance coverage. Before the ACA millions of people were either underinsured or underinsured impacting the quality of their health care. Of those, many were unable to find adequate care because of pre-existing conditions. Even though these plans can be expensive, the law did provide a way for families to get health insurance (Glied & Jackson, …show more content…

The passage of the ACA into law in 2010 was a watershed moment because millions of people who could not afford coverage or who were denied because of preexisting conditions are now able to obtain health insurance coverage. The ACA has decreased medical costs and provided access to quality health care. Equal access to quality health care is the first step to decreasing the health disparities that impact vulnerable populations. Nurses should be aware that they can have a direct influence on disparities by reaching out to the uninsured to make them aware of insurance options and by reminding politicians that health care disparities still exist among their

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Another achievement is the increased coverage for preventive services. The ACA mandates that insurance plans cover preventive services without cost sharing, thereby promoting early detection and preventive care. This has resulted in an increase in the utilization of preventive health services, leading to better health outcomes and reduced healthcare costs (McKenna, Carlson, & Green, 2018). Unintended Consequences and Challenges: Despite the achievements, the ACA also brought some unintended consequences and challenges. One of these is the rising cost of premiums and deductibles.

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“Healthcare Reform 101,” written by Rick Panning (2014), is a wonderful article that describes, in an easy-to-understand language, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, signed into law March 23, 2010. The main goal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was to provide affordable, quality healthcare to Americans while simultaneously reducing some of the country’s economic problems. Two areas will be covered throughout this paper. The first section will include a summary of the major points and highlights of Panning’s (2014) article, including an introduction to the ACA, goals of the signed legislation, provided coverage, and downfalls of the current healthcare system. The second part will be comprised of a professional

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Preceding this order, people with prior conditions were frequently not able to accomplish human services scope. Debate encompassed social insurance change some time before the institution of the Affordable Care Act. While President Clinton's organization neglected to update our country's human services framework in 1993 with the Health Security Act, the Affordable Care Act was the most clearing national change since President Lyndon Johnson's Social Security Amendments Act made Medicare and Medicaid. In spite of the fact that this law has confronted savage resistance, the Affordable Care Act will help Americans lead more beneficial ways of life, while expanding their budgetary security. Under the Affordable Care Act, otherwise called ObamaCare, insurance agencies are no longer permitted to victimize people with prior wellbeing conditions.

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When the Affordable Care Act took effect, millions of previously uninsured citizens were able to gain access to healthcare, many for the first time. The expansion of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) decreased the rate of uninsured people by providing access to private insurance through health insurance exchanges and premium subsidies for both, low and middle- income families. There are 28 states that now cover children in families with joint income up to 250 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) and have removed barriers to CHIP and Medicaid enrollment. Despite the increased access to health care, millions of citizens remain uninsured.

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The success of Medicaid expansion, e.g., improved infant and child care, reduced mortality rates, and increased access to doctors’ offices (instead of expensive ER visits), is hard to argue against. Unfortunately, 12 percent of children still have no health insurance, despite expansions in public health insurance. The 800-pound elephant in the public health insurance room is the states’ budgets. With the stroke of a pen, funding cutbacks can derail any positive gains for public health insurance for children. The ACA was one of the most contentious pieces of legislation to come down the pike since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), and the importance of this piece of legislation is

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The ACA has been making advances in decreasing the amount of uninsured Americans and trying to minimize the amount of healthcare disparities. With the advances throughout history there is still a long way to

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For many decades’ middle and lower class Americans have struggled to get the proper assistance needed to help them better their health. So many Americans had to choose whether to feed their family or go to the doctor due to illness and very often family was the priority. This choice wasn’t because they didn’t need the medical care it was due to the lack of healthcare opportunities within the community and the low income within the household, but thanks to the Affordable Care Act we as U.S. citizens no longer have to choose whether or not to eat or get medical attention; we can now do both. What is the Affordable Care Act?

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The Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as “Obama Care” was signed into law by Barack Obama on March 23rd, 2010. Since the first proposal of the act, many citizens and taxpayers have been skeptical about the bill as many argued it would put a burden on taxpayers; while others were enthused by the idea of universal health care. However, the act is beneficial to those without health insurance as it subsidizes the price of prescription drugs and individuals may receive health insurance regardless if they have a pre-existing condition or not. Contrary to the benefits, problems that have arisen are the burden of high deductibles for recipients. In order to fix these problems, American’s must pay higher taxes in order to keep the program alive,

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Background The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is officially referred to as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act was enacted into law on March 23, 2010. It is estimated that prior to the enactment of the ACA, 44% or 81 million people between the ages 19-64 were either uninsured or underinsured in the United States (Schoen, Doty, Robertson, & Collins, 2011). The populations most likely to be uninsured or underinsured are individuals with earning between 133-200 % below the established federal poverty guidelines (Schoen et al., 2011). Consequently, 80% of individuals with earning under $20,000-$39,999 were uninsured or underinsured (Schoen et al., 2011).

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The ACA offers Americans new benefits and rights in regard to their healthcare. About 40 million

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The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed in March 2010 to deal with America's preexisting medical crisis (pg. 682). Before the ACA there were two main factors leading to the health care crisis, "the increasing cost of health care and the failure to deliver a decent minimum of health care to everyone in need of it" (pg. 693). Furthermore, the cost of health care continued to rise but unfortunately, the health of Americans did not match this trend (pg. 693). Also, because health care used to be tied to employment many people went uninsured because they didn't have employment or because the cost of an employee's insurance was too high (pg. 687). If a person had employment and was able to pay, he or she could still be turned away due to a pre-existing condition (pg.

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Health Care in the US is arguably available to all who seek it but not everybody has had the same experience and treatment when walking through the doors of a healthcare facility. In many cases, people are discriminated against due to their gender, race/ethnicity, age, and income and are often provided with minimal service. Differences between groups in health coverage, access to care, and quality of care is majorly affected through these disparities. Income is a major factor and can cause groups of people to experience higher burden of illness, injury, disability, or mortality relative to another group.

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For examples, policies related to public assistance programs, affordable health care, human rights, educational, employment, housing are just a few issues whose primary focus should be equity. Perhaps one of the most discussed current policy equity is the U.S. healthcare system. Significantly, there are many underlying issues in looking at the disadvantaged in healthcare equity. Because of the great disadvantages in the healthcare system, policymakers should give an extra effort in making sure that healthcare is an equity public policy. “Affordable health care for all” might require equal access to and availability of health care for all, regardless of the ability to pay for the care” (Musgrave, 2006, p,

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Many Americans were led to believe that the introduction of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in 2009 would put an end to disparities in health care access. While it did improve the situation for a small percentage of the population there are still many Americans who lack access to good quality health care. Health care access in America is determined by money and those in lower socioeconomic groups frequently tend to miss out on adequate care. In a recent health care report by the national health research foundation Kaiser Family Foundation, it was noted “health care disparities remain a persistent problem in the United States, leading to certain groups being at higher risk of being uninsured, having limited access to care, and experiencing poorer quality of care” (Kaiser Family Foundation). The current health care

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46.8 million Americans were reported as uninsured in 2013, which equivocates to one sixth of the population. Those without insurance have revealed that they risk “more problems getting care, are diagnosed at later disease stages, and get less therapeutic care” (National Health Care Disparities Report) and those insured risk losing their insurance. Inadequately covered citizens are often working-class individuals who simply cannot receive insurance due to uncontrollable inconveniences and therefore jeopardize having medical coverage. In these instances, Americans have a chance of being diagnosed with diseases that they had no opportunity to prevent or could not diagnose them at an early stage of the illness. Patients have suffered unnecessarily due to lack of health care, and “18,000 Americans die every year because they don't have health insurance” (PNHP).

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