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Essays on the history of healthcare
Essays on the history of healthcare
The 2010 Affordable Care Act
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A system that fails to evolve with those it serves, will become increasingly inefficient (Leadership and change). Prior to the enactment of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), healthcare in the United States of America had reached crisis level. Many Americans did not have adequate access to healthcare as a result of increasing costs (Orentlicher, 2012). Liberals spent the better part of the 20th century seeking to secure healthcare for the indigent, to no avail (Orentlicher, 2012). The Affordable Care Act reformed healthcare which required subsequent changes in the management and delivery of healthcare to the more empowered citizens of our modern times (Blaise & Hayes, 2016). Change has a way of upsetting balance. Depending
There is an ongoing debate on the topic of how to fix the health care system in America. Some believe that there should be a Single Payer system that ensures all health care costs are covered by the government, and the people that want a Public Option system believe that there should be no government interference with paying for individual’s health care costs. In 1993, President Bill Clinton introduced the Health Security Act. Its goal was to provide universal health care for America. There was a lot of controversy throughout the nation whether this Act was going in the right direction, and in 1994, the Act died. Since then there have been multiple other attempts to fix the health care situation, but those attempts have not succeeded. The Affordable Care Act was passed in the senate on December 24, 2009, and passed in the house on March 21, 2010. President Obama signed it into law on March 23 (Obamacare Facts). This indeed was a step forward to end the debate about health care, and began to establish the middle ground for people in America. In order for America to stay on track to rebuild the health care system, we need to keep going in the same direction and expand our horizons by keeping and adding on to the Affordable Care Act so every citizen is content.
The United States (U.S.) has a health care system that is much different than any other health care system in the world (Nies & McEwen, 2015). It is frequently recognized as one with most recent technological inventions, but at the same time is often criticized for being overly expensive (Nies & McEwen, 2015). In 2010, President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) (U. S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.) This plan was implemented in an attempt to make preventative care more affordable and accessible for all uninsured Americans (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.). Under the law, the new Patient’s Bill of Rights gives consumers the power to be in charge of their health care choices. (U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, n.d.).
(W. Lease, personal communication, July 23, 2010), the “unknown” of the recent health care reform legislation is an external influence that is most relevant to our organization, stated by William Lease, senior vice president of clinical support services. Mr. Lease states, that health care reform legislation will impact our organization in many ways; especially after 2014. While more employees will have health insurance coverage and there will be more patients to treat; the need for controlling costs and improving efficiency is i...
Once health care is put into place that is really effective you need to sit back and monitor it. By closing the feedback loop between quality and equity reporting and corrective federal, state, and local policies will be critical given the enormous complexity of reforms” (Fiscella, 2011). “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5: 17).
Healthcare is one of the most dynamic industries in our great nation. To truly understand just how dynamic the industry is, one needs to understand that healthcare in and of itself is a living, breathing industry that is ever changing and conforming to meet the ideals set forth from a broad group of stakeholders. When one looks at the evolution that healthcare has undergone in the past 165 years, the picture of the true dynamics of this industry is painted. One must take this evolutional history into account when looking at the next ten years in our industry. When looking at these evolutional processes, one can see that the systems have changed as our country and its people have required it to (Williams & Torrens, 2008). When looking at how this industry will change or evolve over the next decade, one can ascertain that it will be by the demands of those involved that change will come.
Health insurance, too many American citizens, is not an option. However, some citizens find it unnecessary. Working in the health care field, I witness the effects of uninsured patients on medical offices. Too often, I see a “self-pay” patient receive care from their doctor and then fail to pay for it. Altogether, their refusal to pay leaves the office at a loss of money and calls for patients to pay extra in covering for the cost of the care the uninsured patient received. One office visit does not seem like too big of an expense, but multiple patients failing to pay for the care they receive adds up. Imagine the hospital bills that patients fail to pay; health services in a hospital are double, sometimes triple, in price at a hospital. It is unfair that paying patients are responsible for covering these unpaid services. Luckily, the Affordable Care Act was passed on March 23, 2010, otherwise known as Obamacare. Obamacare is necessary in America because it calls for all citizens to be health insured, no worrying about pre-existing conditions, and free benefits for men and women’s health.
The current state of affairs in the development of health policy in the United States is that it is constantly in flux and its implementation is disorganized and inefficient. As was the case with the recently passed Affordable Care Act legislation, political and lobbying interests often intersect in a manner that makes meaningful, most appropriate changes unlikely. The ACA kept in place the fractured nature of American health care and insurance, and appears to have benefited insurance companies by increasing enrollments rather than making the care provided better on a large scale. The majority of the plans on the created exchanges, up to 87%, are funded by federal subsidies (Blumenthal, Abrams, & Nuzum, 2015). These plans must cover individuals regardless of pre-existing conditions. The burden of the cost of insurance shifted to tax-payers and the young/healthy who are now overly burdened with mandatory coverage that they may or may not need in
As I began watching Reinventing Healthcare-A Fred Friendly Seminar (2008), I thought to myself, “man, things have changed since 2008.” And as the discussion progressed, I started to become irritated by how little had changed. The issues discussed were far-reaching, and the necessity for urgent change was a repeated theme. And yet, eight years later, health care has made changes, but many of its crucial problems still exist.
If the United States had unlimited funds, the appropriate response to such a high number of mentally ill Americans should naturally be to provide universal coverage that doesn’t discriminate between healthcare and mental healthcare. The United States doesn’t have unlimited funds to provide universal healthcare at this point, but the country does have the ability to stop coverage discrimination. A quarter of the 15.7 million Americans who received mental health care listed themselves as the main payer for the services, according to one survey that looked at those services from 2005 to 2009. 3 Separate research from the same agency found 45 percent of those not receiving mental health care listing cost as a barrier.3 President Obama and the advisors who helped construct The Affordable Care Act recognized the problem that confronts the mentally ill. Mental healthcare had to be more affordable and different measures had to be taken to help patients recover. Although The Affordable Care Act doesn’t provide mentally ill patients will universal coverage, the act has made substantial changes to the options available to them.
The people of the United States have been suffering from a number of serious issues, all related to health care: millions go uninsured every year, health care is too expensive, and the quality of care is poor, especially for the price. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or Obama Care, began addressing these issues. The ACA is a United States federal statute signed into law by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. The law was enacted with the goals of increasing the quality and affordability of health insurance, lowering the uninsured rate by expanding public and private insurance coverage, and reducing the costs of healthcare for individuals and the government. Although several of the act’s promises have not come into effect yet, it has managed to extend healthcare to the repetitively uninsured. While many of the accomplishments that the act has already made, and aims to make, are no small feat, there are still issues within the policies and procedures. For example, Obama Care boasts that it is a universal healthcare system. However, it is unlike any other in the world, and is technically forced on citizens in a variety of ways. It has been debated, that for that reason, the new law may come into violation of several human rights. Another significant issue with the ACA regards a cap on citizen’s out-of-pocket expenses, and the fact that the administration decided to delay making a definitive decision, potentially costing many American’s unprecedented medical fees.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act passed by President Barack Obama is a significant change of the American healthcare system since insurance plans programs like Medicare and Medicaid (“Introduction to”). As a result, “It is also one of the most hotly contested, publicly maligned, and politically divisive pieces of legislation the country has ever seen” (“Introduction to”). The Affordable Care Act should be changed because it grants the government too much control over the citizen’s healthcare or the lack of individual freedom to choose affordable health insurance.
paying a tax, fine, and allowing for the pre-existing health condition and adjusting the rates accordingly. According to Hall (2014) another way to help improve on the weakness and maintain a goal for the Affordable Care Act is one of many such as tax breaks for pregnant women with no insurance and support for immigrants legal or not. These immigrants, legal or not, have no coverage, and how some people have insurance premiums that are unaffordable and how pre-existing conditions make it hard for people to seek out insurance with or without jobs. Some employers even pay for these fines and lower the rates to make insurance more affordable for their employees to gain insurance their company instead of gaining it on their own accord. Now
Obamacare: the Temporary Solution to an Evolving Issue The need for universal health care within the United States has been evident, and needs to be addressed. The old healthcare system was plagued with issues, including expensive premiums that were on the rise, along with an inflated average infant mortality rate and limited average life expectancy, which ultimately led to many people being left uninsured (“Affordable” 2). In the 2012 presidential election, one key issue was how to reform America’s broken health care system, and to instate a successful universal healthcare system that has resolved the previous issues. Being one of the last influential and competitive countries in the world without universal healthcare, the pressure was on for the United States to develop its own system.
Due to the affordable Care Act, the middle class will not have the finances to support the everyday cost of living in Indiana. Americans have a hard enough time surviving in the recovering economy. Now they have to deal with higher premiums and increased penalties if they do not sign up for the Affordable Care Act.
Healthcare reform of 2010 changed the way health systems regard success. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act forced providers and insurance companies to increase access for various forms of treatment to all Americans. It reemphasized accountability in a country that spends 18 percent of its gross domestic product on health expenditures, yet ranks near the bottom of developed countries in numerous health categories (Coyne et al, 2014). This recent policy strains resources and funding to a tipping point.