Affordable Care Act Brief : Placing Emphasis On Prevention And Wellness

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” This saying goes to show that investing in preventative care is the only way to effectively reform health care plans in America. It is no secret that there are many issues facing health care; however, the most important issue seems to be the lack of funding for preventative care. Redistributing health care related funds into areas like public health and preventative medicine can increase the overall quality of life for patients. If health care reform revolves around preventative medicine, then America’s standard of health will rise. A healthier society will lessen the demand for expensive life-saving surgeries, thus decreasing the overall cost of health care. The overall solution for this issue would be to set a realistic health care budget that correlates to the United States’ current standard of health, thus majority of the budget focuses on preventative medicine.

Americans have been faced with a new health care reform act known as Affordable Care Act initiated in 2010. Why was it so important for this nation to reform is health care system? How are we sure the ACA is improving our system for the American people? For many years, the health care industry has left many Americans uninsured. With health care costs on the rise and very few able to afford costs, and the quality of care in underserved areas not what it should be has left this nation largely unhealthy. Several landmark reports, including the Center for Disease Control factsheets and the Healthy People 2020 have astounding statistics confirming these alarming rates and clearly identifying the need for reform. The Affordable Care Act is the starting foundation for Americans to start investing in their own promotion of wellness and disease prevention. By choosing healthier lifestyle changes, individuals can make a difference which in turn will improve our nation’s overall health for the better.

Access to care has become a buzz word in the modern healthcare theater. The prevailing thought is that our healthcare system will experience a significant amount strain as an increasing number of individuals seek care with increased number of individuals being covered by third party payers under the affordable care act. Access to care has become a catch-all term used to describe the inability for an individual or population to seek needed healthcare services. Access to care can be divided into 4 major problems within a healthcare setting to include, physical accessibility, affordability, acceptability, and supply and demand. While the current state of our healthcare delivery system in regards to the changes implemented by the affordable care act has attempted to address affordability and acceptability. The affordable care act may have strained the infrastructure of our system in regards to the supply and demand aspects as well as physical accessibility challenges to many populations.

The Affordable Care Act (Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act), commonly called "Obamacare," is a federal statute that was signed into law in March of 2010 (PDF, n.d.; Van de Water, 2011). It basically requires the vast majority of people in the United States who do not have insurance coverage to acquire that coverage or face penalties. People who already have insurance through their employers or on their own will not be asked to change companies. Additionally, anyone who is on federally-funded insurance such as Medicaid or Medicare and still qualifies for those programs will not be removed from their insurance. They will still be covered and protected. In order to find out more about the Act and really understand its main points and principles, however, it is very important to be aware of how it became a law and any changes that have taken place to it from its inception all the way through where it is today. Only then can a person have a clear understanding of the Act and form an opinion as to the value it may (or may not) provide to the American public. There is still much speculation and a great deal of misunderstanding about the Act and what it involves.

Resource allocation has been a complex topic in medicine. Physicians are meant to be patient advocates as well as managers of health care costs. How can an advocate be involved in a process that limits care to some, while providing more complete care to others? As the elderly population grows, the idea of rationing care has become an ethical discussion. Reasons for rationing resources and care might be to preserve dwindling resources or to prevent waste. However, there is a question about who decides what is wasteful or non-beneficial to patient care. The Affordable Care Act is allowing individuals who could not afford healthcare to have access to clinicians and resources. This presents a new concern where more physicians, who already

The concept behind the Affordable Care Law is to provide help with medical assistance for citizens of this nation. When speaking of help, and concept, the Law supports the health of the nation and the health of the patients who need medical assistance. Even more, another huge concept of the plan is to allow the patients to manage their own health needs, this means not allowing corrupt individuals or organization to take advantage of the less fortune. The Affordable Care Act puts consumers back in charge of their health care (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, 2015). As mentioned before the Law helps with coverage, costs, and care. The approach of each of the previous terms mean a great deal for the nation. The choice to medical coverage created by the Law offers great additions to the idea of equity, efficiency and effectiveness.

Some the ten were most covered by existing plans, but not all ten. Under the ACA preventive care, maternity and newborn care, mental and behavioral health treatment, services and devices to help people with injuries, disabilities, or chronic conditions, pediatric care that includes vision and dental care are included within all insurance plans. Hospitalization was not a part of all insurance plans, but it is now covered in all plans. (Amadeo, 2015)All of these aspects of the medical field promote illness prevention and reduces expensive emergency room visits. Moving millions of Americans to the preventive side of medicine instead of the reactive side provides a healthier American public. This decreases days away from work and increases employees’ wages. The ACA does not allow insurance companies to deny applicants due to preexisting conditions or raise premiums once they seek medical attention. This helps many Americans that have had health issues in the past and were unable to obtain health insurance due to these

Before the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was introduced to people, health care insurance was hard for many people to afford. There were up to 129 million Americans that were discriminated against due to preexisting conditions such as heart disease, diabetes, cancer, pregnancy, or even acne. Affordable health care was difficult to receive because it was so expensive. Most people

The new affordable healthcare reform has been delayed until 2015/2016. This mandate requires employers with 50 or more full time employees to provide health insurance or pay a per month "Employer Shared Responsibility Payment" on their federal tax return (Pyne, 2013). This has employers concerned about continued increases in healthcare cost. This cost increase provides an incentive to create new innovative solutions toward healthcare services. One solution that has been gaining traction is the use of preventive care. Preventive care involves a healthy lifestyle from nutrition, exercise and frequent visit to healthcare facilities for health monitoring. Monitoring provides the means to identify issues early so that less costly health services will be required to resolve.

However, the ACA is not enough to fix the health care deficit. By implementing preventative care, EBM, and better home care; the expenses for health care will decrease and the overall health of Americans will improve.

Health care is the prevention, maintenance and prevention of health by treating and preventing illnesses through the services offered by medical professionals. On the other hand, health care reform is government policy that creates or changes health care delivery in a given area. Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, was administered by Obama administration on March 23, 2010. The main goal of the bill is to provide affordable healthcare to Americans who do not go uninsured. The bill includes that letting children stay on their parents’ coverage until age 26, making insurance companies cover those insurance with health conditions, and insuring large businesses to provide health insurance to their employees (“Obamacare Facts”). Obama administration consider privatized healthcare as a main issue because people who are “healthy” will not buy healthcare. Therefore, the less healthy people are the main group who demand health insurance and it causing the rise in the price of health insurance. In addition, it is extremely difficult to receive health insurance for those people who have preexisting conditions, and President Obama has tried to eliminate this bill in ACA. The root in this bill has a good intention; however, the bill is flawed and it hinders the healthcare system as well as the United Stated economy.

Prevention is one of the key ways one can reduce cost in health care for reason that informing others on how eating healthy, exercising regularly, and receiving preventive services such as cancer screenings, preventive visits and vaccinations can be ways for people to stay healthy. (CDC). A preventive service, such as HIV infection prevention, is estimated to save $355,000 in cost (Surgeon General). It has also been noted, that increasing the use of preventive services, that includes tobacco cessation screening and alcohol screening could save us 37 billion dollars annually in medical cost (Surgeon General). Aside from this, even simple recommendation from primary care physician to

To help offset the increasing health care costs that our society faces today, employers are focusing more on adopting good health practices through promotion and disease prevention strategies, often referred to as workplace wellness program. Disease prevention programs have two stages of prevention. The first is to prevent the onset of diseases or to diagnose, where the focus is on addressing the health-related behaviors and risk factor such as encouraging people to consume a healthier diet. The second stage is to treat diseases at an early stage before complications occur. This translates to promoting medication adherence for patients with asthma and other diseases

Out of worry about the effect of chronic disease on employee health and well-being and the cost of health care coverage, employers are implementing health promotion and disease prevention plans, generally

Topic: Discuss the workforce challenges faced by health systems and possible mitigating strategies to address current and future health needs.