The Affordable Care Act A Policy

Evidence supports transitional care programs as a means of improving quality of patient care and reducing 30-day readmission rates. Multiple models exist and all center on common goals of early patient identification, disease-specific patient education, medication reconciliation and education, office follow-up and timely coordination of care and sharing of medical records penitent to patient’s case.

President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act on March 23, 2010. This law puts in place widespread health insurance reforms that expanded out over the last 4 years and continues to change the lives of many Americans today. Health care reform has been an extensively debated topic for multiple years, and the ACA is the first effective attempt at passing a law aiming to make health care not only affordable, but accessible for all individuals. The law impacts many Americans including, children, employers, government programs which includes federal and state, health plans and private insurers, health care coverage, health care cost, and the quality of care received. The main goal of the law is to expand health care coverage, broaden Medicaid eligibility, minimize and regulate health care cost, and improve the health care delivery system. In order to improve the health care delivery there have been new consumer protections established and an increase access to affordable care.

The Affordable Care Act includes changes to Medicare, Medicaid, private insurance, and creates many conflicts and benefits around how it will affect health care in the future. Clearly, all items within the medical reform are connected, so that a positive impact in one area may inversely affect another. The primary change is the extension of health care coverage to the uninsured, but it comes with a cost. Costs include penalties, taxes, reduced medical access, and lower reimbursement rates for physicians and hospitals. The Affordable Care Act is conceived with a good purpose; as a result, everyone will now have access to affordable health care, although, “affordable” is not yet well defined. Health care providers will be able to continue their vocation of providing good care for our society, but in some cases, changes to insurance may still have a poor outcome.

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was the biggest milestone to date in American health care policy (Saldin, 2011). There is nothing more complex or controversial in recent history than the passing of the ACA in 2010 (Davidson, 2016). The three goals of the ACA are to expand access to quality care with affordable insurance for all, work with innovation to lower health care cost, and shift focus from treatment to prevention (Rosenbaum, 2011).

Affordable Care Act (ACA), often known as Obamacare, was signed by President Obama in 2010. The goal of the Act is to increase the number of individuals with health insurance to the point where all Americans are insured by providing quality healthcare at an affordable price. Despite its good intent, the ACA is not as perfect as it may appear. In this paper, I will list the main features of the Act, its pros and cons, and how it affects you as an individual and discuss the King vs. Burwell lawsuit.

The Affordable Care Act(ACA), or Obamacare, is a new law that aims to make healthcare more affordable, increase the quality of healthcare, and expand access to healthcare. In order to provide these benefits

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is a complex federal law that affects health system of the United States in every aspect. ACA goals is to improve quality of healthcare; increase access, and to stabilize and possibly reduce the cost of the healthcare services. ACA provisions include, but not limited to, expansion of Medicaid to all individuals less than 65 years of age whose income is 133% of the Federal Poverty Line (FPL) or below; created Consumer Operated and Oriented Plan a nonprofit, member-run health insurance companies in all 50 states; prohibits existing health insurers to deny coverage due to preexisting conditions; allows states to create a Basic Health Plan for individuals without health insurance and income range of 133-200% FPL; improves prevention services by requiring health plans to include basic preventive coverage without cost-sharing; improve access to health care by providing additional funds for community based health centers and other community based organizations(Knickman, Kover, 2015. Pp344-361). Every provision of ACA will bring significant change to every area of the healthcare and, as a result, changes in access, quality, and cost. These 3 components of the healthcare system are intertwined and change in one will cause the change in the others.

In March 23. 2010 the Health Care Reform law, also known as the “Affordable Care Act” was signed to enhance help for the United States health care system. This law is meant to “provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes”. Although this is the most recent act to help the health care system, this effort to reform the system has been in action for many years with many failed attempts to succeed.

Thousands of Medicare recipients are admitted to the hospital on a daily basis. The majority of admissions are not preventable, but research and studies have shown that patients discharged from varying hospitals are more likely to be readmitted to a hospital (Jencks, et al., 2009; Epstein, A et al., 2011). With increased quality of care, hospitals can prevent readmissions while decreasing Medicare costs.

In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, concerns have been raised regarding the Republicans’ desire to repeal the Affordable Care Act, informally referred to as Obamacare. The ACA was originally enacted into law in 2010 and has been annually provisioned to expand its ability to not only improve the nation’s access to health care, but also to reform the health care delivery system. Through the ACA, private and public insurance has become more available and affordable, new health care delivery models have improved quality of care, and several workforce policies have made primary care a more desirable profession for medical students.

Helping patients stay out of hospitals is not only an important quality improvement objective but also a financial one especially after the advent of Affordable Care Act (ACA). Efforts to improve clinical outcomes and reduce readmissions have been ongoing for several years, but still high readmission rates continue to be an issue for most healthcare organizations. Although many hospital readmissions cannot and should not be avoided, a wide variation in readmission rates across the hospitals nationwide, has led the researchers and Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to believe that hospitals can implement various quality improvement strategies to reduce their readmission rates and improve patient care as a whole. In an effort to reduce readmission rates and achieve better quality outcomes, CMS has started Hospital Readmission Reduction Program (HRRP) under which the hospitals will be penalized by up to 3% of total Medicare reimbursements, for readmission cases within 30 days specifically for conditions like heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and elective hip or knee replacement. The percentage of hospitals receiving a penalty in 2014 was around 64%, which has increased to about 78% in FY 2015 making it a high priority quality improvement concern for healthcare organizations in order to retain their Medicare patients and balance their Medicare reimbursements.

On the ACA, the strategy was founded to increase assess in health care over developments in reimbursement and to proliferate excellence and reduce needless costs. In regards to this problem is the growth in Medicaid expenses, meanwhile the providers do not need to become convoluted in Medicaid programs, and this has an unwanted influence in the patient’s wellbeing; moving the people with fewer monetary incomes, or inadequate salary, since these residents have restricted admission for health care providers, and a great amount of healthcare providers does not contribute in programs with

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), popularly known as “Obamacare”, has drastically altered healthcare in America. The goal of this act was to give Americans access to affordable, high quality insurance while simultaneously decreasing overall healthcare spending. The ACA had intended to maximize health care coverage throughout the United States, but this lofty ambition resulted in staggeringly huge financial and human costs.

The Center for Studying Health Systems Change 2011 study reported that one-third of patients discharged from hospitals do not see a provider within 30 days of admission. An article by Huff (2015) demonstrated the need to have a discharge or transitional care coordinator who is responsible for coordinating discharge follow up appointment, call patient post-discharge to review health status and medication compliance and ensuring providers receive hospital summary in a timely manner. Huff cited a study from Oregon Health and Science University that found that readmission rates declined from 27% to 7.1 %, which was attributed to early transitional care coordinator involvement. This article also discussed the 7 key interventions to managing transitions of care which were medications, transitional care, patient and family education, information transfer, follow up care, provider ownership, and

Steiner (2015) readmissions for congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart attack and pneumonia alone added 6.8 billion dollars to the costs of hospitals in the United States. Evidently when the prevalence of chronic diseases and the billions of dollars that are spent related to chronic diseases are evaluated it is clear to see why the transitional care method works. While Naylor and Keating’s article does not primarily focus on the exact amount that readmissions costs hospitals the article does focus on the success of transitional care in transitioning the patient from the hospital to their home. Specifically, for older patients with chronic diseases, who are more vulnerable to becoming very sick and ending up in the emergency room again (Naylor & Keating,