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The impact of the Affordable Care Act on healthcare
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Congressman Lynn Westmoreland
3rd District Office
1601-B East Highway 34
Newnan, Georgia 30265
Dear Congressman Lynn Westermore
My name is Dominique Clemons and I am writing to you in response to your views on today’s Healthcare issues, specifically the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s main goal was to cover uninsured Americans, which it did. I understand that is has not given coverage to every American, but it has drastically lowered the uninsured percentage. So, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is not at all a “train wreck” as you described, but it does need some work. And although you were opposed to its passage, I think instead of working so hard to repeal it,
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Doctors and nurses were able to give more quality care than quantity. There were also less annual visits to the emergency room. Before, people who were uninsured would go to the emergency room with small medical ailments, and even though they were uninsured, nurses were not allowed to turn them away, causing overflow in hospitals. The healthcare act gave people the chance to be covered for outpatient doctor visits which put less strain on hospitals, and allowed emergency rooms to treat more serious emergencies. This, in turn allowed doctors and nurses to be able to give more one on one care since they had more appointment times and less walk in visits.
Many people today think that the major issue in healthcare right now is The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which in my opinion, is not a real healthcare “issue”. It was the first step towards fixing the real issues that were already in the healthcare system. The act stopped insurance companies from denying coverage and discriminating against patients based on health status and gender. It expanded Medicaid to millions of people. And it also removed the lifetime cap on coverages, which allowed children with chronic conditions to keep getting help with medicals costs from insurance
The aim of affordable care act (ACA) was to extend health insurance coverage to around 15% of US population who lack it. These include people with no coverage from their employers and don’t have coverage by US health programs like Medicaid (Retrieved from, https://www.healthcare.gov/glossary/affordable-care-act/). To achieve this, the law required all Americans to have health insurance which is a reason of controversy because, it was inappropriate intrusion of government into the massive health care industry and insult to personal liberty. To make health care more affordable subsidies are offered and the cost of the insurance was supposed to be reduced by bringing younger, healthier people to the health insurance system. This could be controversial, if older, sicker people who need the coverage most enter the market but younger group decline to do so. The insurance pool will be unbalanced and the cost of coverage will rise correspondingly.
came into effect, the Medical Care Act was put into place all across Canada. Other
First and foremost is the fact that it has provided upwards of 32 million Americans with some type of health insurance coverage. With the passing of the law, all insurance companies are now required to cover ten essential health benefits, including but not limited to mental health, addiction and chronic diseases. This saves money because these are the very people that would end up in the emergency room for treatment if they do not have access to healthcare. It has removed the stigma of preexisting conditions and now ensures insurance companies will no longer be able to deny coverage because of medical conditions and the insured can no longer be dropped or experience increased premiums should they develop a catastrophic illness. The lifetime and annual limits on coverage were eliminated which will help those who encounter tragic injury or illness; possibly preventing them from bankrupting themselves trying to pay for life saving measures. Children can now remain on their parent’s policy up to the age of 26. This alone has supplied around 3 million people with insurance coverage that they didn’t previously have (Shaffer, 2013). Health care reform gave each individual state the opportunity (although not all exercised this right) and option to expanded Medicaid rosters, making the threshold 138% of the Federal poverty level (Chang & Davis, 2013). The Affordable Care Act which includes the Prevention and Public Health
For decades, one of the many externalities that the government is trying to solve is the rising costs of healthcare. "Rising healthcare costs have hurt American competitiveness, forced too many families into bankruptcy to get their families the care they need, and driven up our nation's long-term deficit" ("Deficit-Reducing Healthcare Reform," 2014). The United States national government plays a major role in organizing, overseeing, financing, and more so than ever delivering health care (Jaffe, 2009). Though the government does not provide healthcare directly, it serves as a financing agent for publicly funded healthcare programs through the taxation of citizens. The total share of the national publicly funded health spending by various governments amounts to 4 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, GDP (Jaffe, 2009). By 2019, government spending on Medicare and Medicaid is expected to rise to 6 percent and 12 percent by 2050 (Jaffe, 2009). The percentages, documented from the Health Policy Brief (2009) by Jaffe, are from Medicare and Medicaid alone. The rapid rates are not due to increase of enrollment but growth in per capita costs for providing healthcare, especially via Medicare.
The bill created a Job Corps similar to the New Deal Civilian Conservation Corps; a domestic peace corps; a system for vocational training. The bill also funded community action programs and extended loans to small businessmen and farmers. This helped people to get jobs with good wages.Then came the Medicare Act of 1965 which help people to get better health coverage. “No longer will older Americans be denied the healing miracle of modern medicine. No longer will illness crush and destroy the savings that they have so carefully put away over a lifetime so that they might enjoy dignity in their later years” (1) In 1964 more than 44 percent senior had no health coverage or insurance. Senior citizens were dragged down to poverty as they were not able to pay the medical bills. But after the Medicare Act of 1965 which provide everyone with the medical coverage of all people age 65 and above this issue was almost solved. Along with the Medicare, the Johnson Administration established the Medicaid program to provide healthcare to the poor. Different from Medicare, this Federal-state partnership is largely determined in form and construct by each individual state. In the first three years of the program, nearly 20 million beneficiaries were enrolled
Healthcare has been a topic of discussion with the majority of the country. Issues with insurance coverage, rising costs, limited options to gain coverage, and the quality of healthcare have become concerns for law makers, healthcare providers and the general public. Some of those concerns were alleviated with the passing of the Affordable Care Act, but new concerns have developed with problems that have occurred in the implementation of the new law. The main concerns of the country are if the Affordable Care Act will be able to overcome the issues that plagued the old healthcare system, the cost of the program, and how will the new law affect the quality of the health delivery system.
The amount of money that is spent on healthcare is a quite a bit of money but about 10% of all the money is a result of some sort of medical fraud or abuse. This is about 120 billion dollars. With HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) medical fraud and abuse can be tracked easier. HIPAA was enacted in august of 1996; this was to help improve the portability and continuity of the health insurance.
One of the policies that ACA made to improve healthcare quality is to provide free preventive screening, immunization, and wellness visit. Since this policy took place, 76 million Americans now receive free preventive care. Moreover, under this policy doctors will get paid more so they can take more proactive approach to patient care and making sure patients are healthy, rather than only treating them when they are sick. Also by making the healthcare recorders electronic that increased the quality of healthcare. Creating EHRs decreased healthcare errors, decreased the amount of time spent on documenting and increased space capacity. Moreover, by creating EHRs this gave the healthcare providers extra time to spend with their
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.).
With congress passing ObamaCare last year we are taking baby steps towards a health system overhaul we so desperately need. The skeptics, though, still argue against it, citing the costs as too much or that it’s un-american. Health care is a basic need for everyone, and as such should be right protected and provided for by the government. There are great, economic, moral, and social benefits to be reaped, and so it is important for our government to continue down this path its started and also important for Americans to provide our full support. There is much to overcome to completely reverse the direction of the health system, and I’m sure it will take many years for the results to pay off, but I’m glad we’ve at least provided the groundwork for future generations to build
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.
Less than a quarter of uninsured Americans believe the Affordable Care Act is a good idea. According to experts, more than 87 million Americans could lose their current health care plan under the Affordable Care Act. This seems to provide enough evidence that the Affordable Care Act is doing the exact opposite of what Democrats promised it would do. On the other hand, this law includes the largest health care tax cut in history for middle class families, helping to make insurance much more affordable for millions of families. The Affordable Care Act has been widely discussed and debated, but remains widely misunderstood.
...ue to numerous medical errors. With the amount of medical errors that currently do occur which is a current health care issue it cost the health care billions of dollar each year to fix the mistakes that were made.
Health care has always been an interesting topic all over the world. Voltaire once said, “The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.” It may seem like health care that nothing gets accomplished in different health care systems, but ultimately many trying to cures diseases and improve health care systems.