“In 2010, Congress enacted the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in order to increase the number of Americans covered by health insurance and decrease the cost of health care” (Supreme Court Opinion, 1). In America, it is a basic necessity to possess health care, logically, Congress would like to make such a necessity more accessible to Americans. Due to a divided government, there are variant views on whether this is necessary and just. Health care benefits all Americans; it is just a matter of if the policy of a required national health care is beneficial. Under the Affordable Care Act, “the scope of the Medicaid program was expanded and the number of individuals the States must cover was increased”. If states do not abide by …show more content…
16–27. By regulating the State’s commerce, Congress is limiting what States really need to satisfy, their residents. Each state is different, and so are their residents. Simply enforcing a standard cookie-cutter health plan forces States to ignore their previous needs, and “budgetary challenges; Each state should be able to develop solutions that meet its specific needs” (Robert E. Moffit, Ph. D). Not only do states desire their unique health care for themselves, but for their citizens as well. Although the ACA is arguably for the public good, only a certain class desires such a health care, not every citizen. Yet, if citizens refuse this health care, a “penalty” is imposed. “The payment is not so high that there is really no choice but to buy health insurance; the payment is not limited to willful violations, as penalties for unlawful acts often are; and the payment is collected solely by the IRS through the normal means of taxation”. (Supreme Court Opinion) Yet, a payment can be major for those who: do not have the means to pay for it, and disagree with the health care plan. Also, “the new law adds a number of health care services that insurers must cover and in some cases restricts the ability of insurers and employer self-insured health plans to impose limits on the amount of services patients can consume. This combination will drive up health plan costs and premiums for both individual insurance and employer-group coverage” (Edmund F. Haislmaier). Yet,
Anderson, Amy. “The Impact of the Affordable Care Act on the Health Care Workforce.” The Heritage Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 July 2015. This paper is a through report on the impact of the ACA on the workers in healthcare, particularly on the ratio of worker to patients. It shows that the act will increase the physician shortage, particularly in already underserved areas and specialties. It will also greatly increase the stress on workers, due to the increase demand from each physician or nurse and the increased amount of regulatory paperwork required. Many healthcare providers are merging into larger business to cut costs; others are running cash-only or annual-fee models. The act attempts to transition to paying physicians for performance
Critically analyze the implications of the state’s decision to opt out of Medicaid expansion on the citizens of the state.
The concept of providing basic healthcare services to individuals in need has undergone an agonizing transition, from a luxury once only afforded by the affluent to a basic human right granted to citizens of every economic station, and the recently enacted Affordable Care Act (ACA) was designed to finalize this ethical evolution. Reflecting perhaps the bitter political enmity currently consuming the nation's once cherished democratic process, Republican legislatures in states throughout the union have bristled at the ACA's primary provisions, threatening all manner of procedural protestation as they attempt to delay and derail the bill's eventual implementation. One of the most intriguing aspects of the sprawling, thousand page law, however, has been the stipulation that individual states will be given a choice to either accept federal funding to expand their statewide Medicaid roster, or to forfeit all federal funding for that program in perpetuity. The role of government in monitoring and regulating the healthcare industry has been long debated, and the bitterly contested passage of President Obama's ACA, a law aimed at revising the country's health insurance system through the creating of a federal health insurance exchange to facilitate increased competition among insurers, has rekindled the debate over who holds the ultimate responsibility for regulating the care provided by hospitals, community clinics, and private practices.
These programs in state level would cater health service on basic levels to rural areas and also the urban areas. However, There must be the same rules and regulations for health care services across the state as well as the country and the access to minority groups to health care services must be fast and continuous in rate. The positives of state flexibility in health care certainly outweigh the negative in that some states have more growth than other states, therefore in these situations, the levels of health care may differ. As population and development grows in a state, the health care industry must grow, thus increasing the need for new technology. "Due to the needs of vulnerable populations and the requirements necessary to make health insurance coverage for them viable, these programs are quite different from standard private health insurance plans (Teitelbaum & Wilensky, 2013)." Private state insurance health care plans have the flexibility of choosing what groups they want to cover and what type coverage they will pay for. Medicaids concern for the needy is ethical and moral, illness or injury doesn't
Texas, which currently has a large uninsured population and limited Medicaid eligibility, forfeits billions of dollars from the federal government every year by not expanding its Medicaid program as implemented in the Affordable Care Act. In contrast, Medicaid expansion could benefit the state exponentially and give its citizens the fullest potential of what this country offers. A substantial amount of federal funding that could increase uninsured coverage, improve healthcare costs, and provide economic stimulus is left on the table. Additionally, the nation benefits when each state participates, contributing to the success of the healthcare reform.
The potential opportunity for the state to opt into the Medicaid expansion is the fact that low-income citizens will be insured. The decision of the state to opt into the Medicaid expansion will also impact the state’s budget, and this is the main challenge (Frakt, 2013). The government will cover majority of all the cost even as Medicaid expansion provides coverage for the low-income uninsured citizens. Expansion of the Medicaid is also a broken system that has poor outcomes, not severe federal strings, high inflation and no incentive for the personal responsibility of the citizens who
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
The Affordable Care Act promotes Medicaid expansion. Medicaid expansion is needed in North Carolina to insure the disabled and those that live below the poverty level receive adequate healthcare coverage. The resistance of North Carolina legislature in the promotion of Medicaid reform has retarded Medicaid expansion to its uninsured residents. The cooperation of the North Carolina legislature and its support of the Affordable Care Act is necessary for successful Medicaid reform. This paper reviews the impact of the Affordable Care Act 's lack of implementation in North Carolina.
In Title IX named, Revenue Provisions, will provide a middle-class tax cut to help those families and small business owners have more affordable insurance coverage ("Read the Law | HealthCare.gov", n.d).
Dr. Donald A. Barr in Introduction to US Health Policy discusses the different methods in which states attempt to expand health care coverage throughout his book. In chapter eight, The Uninsured, Barr focusses on one such successful expansion. Massachusetts increases the number of people insured in their state through individual mandate, a term used to describe when a government requires individuals to obtain health care (240). After the success of Massachusetts, the federal government attempted a similar system through a policy called the Affordable Care Act (ACA). How does the ACA compare to the Massachusetts’s policy? Though the ACA was made to reflect the Massachusetts’s individual mandate policy, they also have some key differences.
With every new election comes new legislature the 2008 election had to deal with the hot new topic the Affordable Health Care Act (ACA). Then when Barack Obama was elected into office, he wanted it to be changed to Obamacare. Obamacare and the ACA is relatively the same thing. It is referred to as Obamacare because he is the one who signed for it to be passed. Due to the stress that Obamacare has put on the elderly, state businesses and small local business’s think that the United States should discontinue Obamacare during the next administration.
Texas has the largest uninsured population with an estimated 6.2 million uninsured citizens within its stateliness, approximately a quarter of the statewide population (Rapoport, 2012). In 2012, then governor, Rick Perry decided that Texas would not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). This decision led to much debate over whether or not Perry made the right decision to leave upwards of a million Texans, who did not receive insurance subsidies and did not qualify for Medicaid, uninsured. These Texans fell under what many politicians refer to as the “coverage gap.” Texas decided not to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act because of the effects it would have on hospitals, financial reasons, and increased number of
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
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
Typically, when the United States mandates a new federal policy, it is up to the implementation of states to enforce; The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is no exception. While the ACA has sparked a particularly concerted effort of objection amongst states (Leonard, 2012), it can be extremely beneficial to see the outcome of this implementation in the political context of each state and learn from their differences. In New Mexico, the main objective of the ACA was achieved; when reviewed in 2015, 52,358 individuals had either opted for or were re-enrolled in health insurance through the Marketplace who would have otherwise been uninsured (Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, 2015). As the future of the policy will rapidly change in the coming months, it is imperative that a concerted effort be made to look at what worked in the past few years so that the next few may move forward rather than rehash a previously treaded path.