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Affordable Care Act And Obamacare

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With being one of the sickest and poorest states in the United States, in what ways can the state of Mississippi increase the overall compliance of all residents having health care coverage as well as reducing the amount of non-emergent visits to the Emergency Room by adopting the Affordable Care Act (in its entirety)? In what ways can guidance provided by other countries help the state in closing the gap in availability, affordability, and coverage?
Background:
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Affordable Care Act and/or Obamacare) was signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23rd, 2010. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was enacted to increase the affordability of health insurance by controlling the …show more content…

For many years, Mississippi has topped the list of states with the highest rates of adult and childhood obesity, diabetes, hypertension, low birth weight babies and infant mortality. As of January 2014, Mississippi was also ranked #1 with 24.1% of its population falling below the Federal Poverty Level. The highest indicator of 2014 was 33.7% of children falling below poverty. Figure 19
For close to 50 years, the Mississippi Medicaid program has provided health coverage for its low-income residents. “While Medicaid originally only insured Americans receiving cash welfare assistance, Congress expanded it over the years to help insure those left behind by the private insurance system”.7 Medicaid in the state of Mississippi is a health care program that help pays for medical services for its low income residents. In Fiscal Year (FY) 2009, Medicaid provided $3.9 billion in benefits which attributed to 20.4% of all health care spending in the state7 and insured 754,333 – 1 out 4 (25.6%) state residents.6
Medicare has given the elderly population and people with disabilities access to health care coverage. It traditionally protects recipients and their families against health related expenses that could otherwise drastically hurt their finances. In FY 2009, the state of Mississippi spent over $5.2 billion in benefits for its recipients, which accounted for 26.9% percent of the overall health care spending for the entire state.

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