Health Reform Legislation Essay

“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: Implications for Public Health Policy and Practice.” Public Health Reports. Association of Schools of Public Health. n.d. Web. 14 July 2015. This paper claims that the PPACA will cut the number of uninsured Americans in half. The act attempts to provide nearly universal coverage and improve the quality and equity of said coverage through reforms to insurance standards and the marketplace. It also attempts to improve the quality of healthcare and the efficiency of its delivery by allowing consumers to edge the system into a more integrated state and measuring performance. It attempts to encourage preventive medicine by targeting chronic illnesses and funding community-based medicine. These changes will bring huge opportunities for improvement in the system, many of which are subtle and nuanced and will only be seen as the plan rolls into act over the next few

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) had mame dramatic changes in the field of the health care system, especially in Medicare, that will seriously take effect in American seniors. Indeed, much of the health law’s new spending is financed by spending reductions in the Medicare program. In addition to the provider payment reductions, Obamacare significantly reduces payments to Medicare Advantage (MA) plans by an estimated $156 billion from 2013 to 2022.( Elmendorf, letter to Speaker Boehner). About 27 percent of all Medicare beneficiaries are enrolled in MA plans, a system of regulated and private plans competing against each other as an alternative to traditional Medicare. MA plans are attractive to beneficiaries because they offer more generous and comprehensive coverage than traditional Medicare by capping out-of-pocket costs and offering drug coverage to a rasonable

Since the advent of health insurance in the 1950s, there have been many models of care that are come to the scene in an attempt to both control cost of care and improve quality of care. Insurance models came into being because the fee for service model used until then was proving to increase cost of healthcare without any measure of quality of services and care provided. Health insurance models have evolved from the basic hospital offered insurance to employer sponsored coverage plans. The US health system is broken both financially and quality wise with more than 20% of gross domestic product being spent on healthcare (Blackstone, 2016).

A powerful force for change can be created by embracing transparency. According to the Department of Health and Human Services, “transparency is a broad-scale initiative enabling consumers to compare quality and the price of health care services so they can make their own informative choices among doctors and hospitals. This initiative is laying the foundation for pooling and analyzing information about procedures, hospitals and physicians services. In order to create value driven health care, there are four steps to turn raw data into

LEADER’S EFFECTIVENESS USING UTILITARIANISM AS THE ETHICAL DECISION-MAKING APPROACH IN REGARD TO THE HEALTHCARE CHALLENGES SET FORTH BY THE PROTECTION AND AFFORDABLE CARE ACT OF 2010

The latest health care reform has done what few policies manage to do – sicken both republicans and progressive democrats. While we can all agree that a reform of the health care system is sorely needed, we must also acknowledge that “Obamacare” is not the cure-all we so desperately require. Rather, President Obama, like a medieval barber, prescribed a health care reform that treated the symptoms of our flawed system rather than the actual disease. The subsidization of health insurance providers has proven ineffective at providing affordable coverage for all. Certainly one is likely to hear the various incendiary talking points of both the proponents and opponents. Whether it’s the republican candidates blaspheming Obamacare as socialism, or the administration praising the success of health care for all, it is difficult to actually find constructive dialogue. We are purview to many sound bites, but few actual solutions. We have witnessed heated debates, but rarely do we witness intelligent discourse. If beneficial reform is to be crafted and implemented, we must first acknowledge the issues and inconsistencies of the current system and begin to explore alternate methods of providing health care to the American people.

The Affordable Care Act was into law March 2010. The law has planned to make wide-range of changes to healthcare in the United States. The Affordable Care Act efforts to offer universal right to use to healthcare for Americans, control the rising costs of healthcare, adjust the private insurance industry complete things like state-based private exchanges and online marketplace that brings together state-approved insurance plans from multiple companies so consumers can shop for individual insurance plans, improve the quality of healthcare and make healthcare choices more consumer friendly and easier to understand (Medical Mutual,2017). Healthcare reform involves nearly all Americans from old or young,

The negative impacts of healthcare reform to health systems are significant in that health systems are preparing their resources on developing Accountable Care Organizations (ACO) for bundled payments and population-based reimbursement. In this economy the impact to health systems may require healthcare systems to figure out ways to continue to keep positive financial performance due to the cost-reduction of healthcare reform. For some time now, health systems have subsidized their losses from the Medicare and Medicaid systems by contracting with commercial payers for their premium rates. As a result of the healthcare reform, cost shifting will shrink. Another negative impact over the next few years will be the large shift in health plan enrollment. Less people will be covered by highly

Many individuals will say that Obamacare is a great law, because so many people who are uninsured before now have coverage. For an example, cancer patients are able to afford medical insurance for a discounted price. (Goodnough 2). Although this is true, someone still has to pay the money that was discounted off of the bill. Which is another reason why insurers are pulling out, they're left with the burden of paying the

Since the implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010, there has been a continuous debate about the effects it will have on the United States economy. Many people argue that expanding insurance coverage for all people will create crippling cost burdens for the economy and taxpayers. While others believe that the ACA will in fact give the economy a much-needed boost. In 2006 as a measure to improve overall healthcare, the state of Massachusetts implemented the Health Care Insurance Reform Act. This paper looks at the positive and negative effects of the Massachusetts Health Care Insurance Reform Act (MHRA). Using a literature review of public health studies ranging from 2009-2012, I argue that there are both positive and negative effects of the Massachusetts Health Care Insurance Reform. While the Massachusetts Reform increased health insurance coverage for all citizens and decreased the number of uninsured citizens accessing emergency rooms, it also did very little to decrease already existing racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities among minorities and whites in the state of Massachusetts. Understanding the Massachusetts Health Care Insurance Reform Act may help in the goal of trying to achieve near-universal healthcare. This paper provides an understanding of the missing pieces in the Massachusetts Health Care Insurance Reform Act and constitutes a starting place from which to understand the Affordable Care Act.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act establishes new requirements for health plans and insurers changed in order to expand access to affordable coverage, and prevent individuals from losing certain coverage. New coverage insurance market regulations will prevent health insurers from denying coverage to people for any reason, in which their health status, and charging people more based on their health status and gender. These new rules will also require that all new health plans provide extensive coverage that include at least a minimal set of services, caps annual out‐of‐pocket spending that does not impose cost‐sharing for preventive services, as well as no impose annual or lifetime limits on coverage. For example, new insurance market regulations within private insurances allow young adults are able to stay in their parents health insurance up to the age 26. Once an employee has reached age 26 they have to upgrade from their parents insurance plan to defendant coverage plan eliminating annual and lifetime limits on coverage such as rescissions and waiting periods within 90 days. Health insurers will be prohibiting from placing an age limit to their coverage in case of fraud. Large employer that offer coverage plans will have to automatically places employs in to a low cost premium plan if the employ sign up or exit out of coverage. Overall health plan premiums will be able to vary based on an age, geographic area tobacco

‘Over 105 million people living in America today no longer have to worry about having their health benefits cut off’ (Secretary WH) . Since enacted, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been able to provide for millions of lower and middle class Americans a secure and reasonable healthcare plan that best suits their medical needs. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) also commonly refer to as ‘Obamacare’ was a solution implemented in 2010 to help reform the precarious healthcare system in the United States. The ACA imposed three key reforms adopted from the successful Massachusetts system of healthcare. First, the ACA established a “guaranteed issue and community rating requirements” which essential barred healthcare insurances

For the first time in history, insurance companies will no longer be allowed to simply tell a person “no”. They will be required to offer coverage and accommodate regardless of a person’s health status, and they will not be able to jack up rates or drop any one from coverage when the main person in the insurance packet gets sick.

The health insurance market in the United States has been anything but competitive since the dawn of it 's existence. In many states, a single health insurance provider dominates the market, with virtually no competition (Holahan and Blumberg). In the past, before 2010, there has been no “marketplace” to compare prices for health insurance, which has contributed to ignorance in terms of finding competitive, lower prices for health insurance. Essentially, health insurance providers have been “price makers” rather than “price takers” because the demand for health insurance is relatively inelastic (as people will always get sick or get

The minimum medical loss ratio (MLR) regulations in the Affordable Care Act is one of the most touted features for consumer protection which aims to improve regulation of private health insurance by guaranteeing that 80%-85% of the premiums dollars is spent on medical care and improvement of healthcare quality. This new provision aims at reducing the administrative costs and profit margins of the Insurance companies by imposing restrictions on healthcare premiums, setting limits on the dollar amount of the premiums being spent and making the Insurance companies who pay less than the minimum “medical loss ratio” to