Affordable Care Act Issues With The Uninsured

The Affordable Care Act was passed to provide American’s better access to health insurance coverage. In addition to better access the ACA improved health care quality and lowered health care cost. The ACA reformed health insurance by expanding coverage, holding insurance companies accountable, lowering health care costs, guaranteeing more choices, and enhancing the quality of care. Although some states have not implemented all the benefits of the ACA, most citizens do have access to health insurance. This paper will address some of the general highlights of the ACA, how it impacted healthcare and the nursing practice.

Senior citizens across the country who cant afford regular health care prices use medicade to lower their price, and The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 is making it more difficult for seniors to recieve Medicade help practically taking all the relief given to senior citizens with obamacare. The effects on senior citizens will be catastrophic there will be a shortage of 95,000 doctors due to pay cuts. Which will make it to where less and less people can be seen by a doctor each day. Seniors, in fact, will have to pay at least ten percent more than their usual medicare plan due to tax

In 2009 there were 50.7 million people, 16.7% of the population, without health insurance. Americans all over the country are working and yet they still can’t afford to pay the high cost of health insurance for themselves and their families. Under the Affordable Care Act of 2010, which was signed by Obama on March 23, 2010, thirty two million Americans who were previously not eligible for Medicaid may now have the opportunity to be covered. If this act is passed in North Carolina then it will be expanded to cover nearly all of the 1.5 million North Carolinians who are without health insurance. If more Americans are covered under the Medicaid that they need then

The Affordable Care Act (ACA), also referred to as ObamaCare, is a complex U.S healthcare reform that attempts to expand and improve access to healthcare and decrease spending through taxes and regulations. The main goal of the ACA is to provide more Americans with affordable health insurance. States vary in when and how they implemented the ACA in order to meet the needs of their state in hope to decrease the uninsured population. Every state had the option decide whether to offer healthcare through a state-based or a federal marketplace. Some states sued the federal government questioning whether they even had to right to impose this act. New Mexico and Pennsylvania are just two of the states that have had to figure out a way implement the Affordable Care Act. Each one had to take into consideration several factors including their state population, the demographics of that population, how many uninsured people there were, and the economy of their state. They both had the public plans such as Medicaid, Medicare and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) options as well as new federal subsidies that would now be offered depending upon income. Since there is no “one size fits all” health plan each state was challenged to make the best decisions using the tools available to them. This information was then used to formulate a plan that would give the most people access to affordable healthcare in each of these

As a health policy analyst for the state of Texas which has not elected to expand Medicaid as part of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and now has been notified that the state leaders have taking into reconsideration their recent decision during an upcoming session in order that we begin gathering data on the benefits of adapting the Medicaid expansion. As a health policy analyst our goal is to assure data quality, interpret data, and discover new information in the data. Medicaid is a federal and state partnership with shared authority that is a health insurance program for low-income individuals, children, their parents, the people with disabilities and the elderly. Nationally Medicaid covers health care for over 72 million people. Even though participation is optional, all 50 states participate in the Medicaid program. However, Medicaid benefits eligibility varies widely among the states all states must meet federal minimum requirements, but they have options for expanding Medicaid beyond the minimum federal guideline (http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/affordable-care-act-expansion.aspx). In this research we will identify the state of interest which is Texas, compare the state’s decision, determine the alternate approaches to expanding access and provide a recommendation on whether or not the state should opt in to the Medicaid expansion.

One of the most important reasons for passing the ACA was to make health insurance more accessible and affordable. In North Carolina, approximately 1.7 million nonelderly people were uninsured in 2009, but the ACA requires expansion of coverage to uninsured individuals by extending Medicaid coverage to more low-income adults, which in turn, strengthens the employer-based health insurance system, and making it easier and more affordable for the majority of people to buy private coverage (Silberman et al., 2011). According to Silberman et al. (2011), the North Carolina Division of Medical Assistance

Medicaid initially established that each state is responsible for designing their medical costs to pay medical care for the poor. Also, Medicaid created as a voluntary program for each state; they have to have the choice to participate. For one thing, because of the rising costs of healthcare, it has been difficult to bring Medicaid recipients into the “mainstream” of United States (U.S.) medical care. Donald R. Barr notes, “between 1975 and 1989, the cost of the Medicaid program increased by an average of 11.9 percent per year before adjusting for inflation” (172). The rising costs of healthcare are necessary for each state to determine if it is beneficial for them to participate in the Medicaid program. As the government level of payment is determined by each state economic condition. For instance, a state with lower per capita income will receive more government funding. A state with higher per capita income receives less reimbursement for program costs. Therefore, on December 31, 2010, many states continued to experience budget cuts. As a result on August 2010, Congress increased reimbursement rates through June 2011.

The Affordable Care Act enabled more people to obtain health insurance, thus receiving healthcare. This offers a larger variety of people to obtain healthcare, in particular, those who cannot afford it. However, this also increased the stress on a fragile healthcare system with limited professionals and has arguably made a push for a refined method of how to provide and extend care to millions of Americans. The access to healthcare and requirements to have health insurance from 2010 to 2014 have grossly changed. In 2010, if someone did not want healthcare, they did not have to get it, but in 2014, there was a fine established if one refused to buy health insurance. At that point, the fines would cost one more annually than actually buying

For those states that decided to take part in the Medicaid expansion it would help adults that were living under the poverty line. Many of these adults did not have jobs that offered them health insurance or they struggle to even pay the bills to just barely get by, and therefore health insurance is one of the last things on their mind when it comes to having that or being able to have electricity or even putting food on the table, they are not able to just go and be able to pick out health insurance for themselves and their family because they live below the poverty line. Officials promised that individuals who liked their currents plans would be able to keep them but it turned out that was not the case because many current plans of insurance did not meet the standards that the Affordable Care Act made. Again employers had to change their plans to fit the standards, premiums shot up and many of the plans had more coverage then what most people needed- meaning they had to pay higher copays and deductibles. They would use the marketplace to find the details of the types of plans that were being offered. States that choose not to participate in the expansion of Medicaid still would not have the people who lived in between the 100%-138% level of income on the federal poverty would be able to be granted subsidies but these subsidies might not cover their entire monthly cost for their health insurance, or their premium. Because of this though there is less on an incentive for people to go out and buy insurance on their own. “With fourteen states opting out, we estimate that 3.6 million fewer people would be insured, federal transfer payments to those states could fall by $8.4 billion, and state spending on uncompensated care could increase by $1 billion in 2016, compared to what would be expected if all states participated in the expansion.”(Polycin, 2009). For the

The Medicaid revisions and expansion under the ACA, exhibited the federal government overstepping their power as they tried to penalize any state governments in opposition of the expansion, consequently, taking away states’ power. The Medicaid Expansion Mandate would’ve compelled states to join due to the loss of federal funding towards Medicaid if they did not adhere to (Phi Le, par.40). The Supreme Court hearing allowed states to have a choice whether or not to participate in the expansion without a total loss of their Medicaid funding. In return, states who didn't participate wouldn’t receive additional funding that coupled with this mandate that required inclusion, extending coverage of those who were at “Income below or ar 133% federal

Any individual not obtaining health insurance will pay a tax penalty of six hundred and ninety-five dollars and a half percent of taxable income. Each year the fine will be increased by the government based on a cost-of-living adjustment (Sanger-Katz, 2014).

Looking at the different readings which analyzed and discussed the different ways that states are handling the Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act, it seems that each state has their own unique prospective on the expansion, dependent on the political leanings and wealth of the state. For example, one of the article describes Kentucky opting to traditional Medicaid, while Arkansas opted to buy coverage for the poor through the federal marketplace. The states that have limited the expansion of Medicaid seems to be typically Republican states, which obviously has an issue with not only the costs associated with the expansion but also the ideological issues that seems to be in conflict with

The first main issue that people are concerned with, and that causes confusion, is what will happen to people if they do not get their own health insurance by the time the Act takes effect. In short, they will be fined or penalized (McDonough, 2011). This penalty is seen as

Public policy, such as subsidies in the form of tax credits for the purchase of health plans through the exchanges, have been in existence since the inception of the ACA, but one could contend that this falls short on many fronts. Subsidy thresholds and amounts are simply too low and premium costs too high for many middle-income earners to make ends meet. In some cases people would rather risk going without insurance and pay the penalty, than pay for a plan they can’t afford to use anyway (Bernard,

Throughout the 20th century and into the 21st century the United States has always had a realization that there was a problem with obtaining affordable health insurance. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) also known as Obamacare, was signed into law in March 2010. This law enables people who were unable to afford healthcare the ability to obtain a healthcare plan at an affordable rate. In 2009 a survey was taken as to the amount of people in the United States that carried health insurance. In table one below you can see over 50 million people in the United States did not have any type of insurance, which is close to 17 percent of the population (see table 1 below). “According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, “32%