WK-5-A-2: Please use APA format and list and site all sources and references: Co
ID: 360157 • Letter: W
Question
WK-5-A-2:
Please use APA format and list and site all sources and references:
Consider what you have learned about the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), the uninsured population, health disparities, and programs and policies intended to improve quality of care and health outcomes, while reducing healthcare expenditure. Summarize your thoughts on the future of healthcare given the provisions of the ACA—changes to Medicare and Medicaid, the individual mandate, etc., and whether or not current efforts are sufficient to reduce disparities in healthcare and improve healthcare outcomes.
Tasks:
Evaluate the impact that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has and will have on the uninsured population in the U.S.
Discuss current successes and failures of this act.
Discuss implications of this act’s successes and failures.
Explain specific policy changes that could be made to the ACA to improve its impact on overall health outcomes in the U.S.
Identify one policy that encourages healthcare disparities. Explain how it encourages disparities.
Recommend at least one policy that could help to reduce or eliminate healthcare disparities in that population. Please justify your answer with data and examples.
Please use APA format and Try to reach outlands site all sources and references:
At least 4 to 6 Page in APA format.
Explanation / Answer
Affordable Care Act (ACA) aims to offer low income Americans with medical support and better health security through comprehensive health reforms. It also aims to improve both the Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Since the ACA was signed in 2010 by President Obama, it has been a center of debate among public. It has been termed under Obamacare.
Impact of Affordable Care Act (ACA) on the uninsured population in the US.
Many studies had been conducted to analyze the impact of Affordable Care Act on insured as well as uninsured population in the US.
Brown and Timothy (2012)
The main impact of ACA on uninsured people is that uninsured patients were reported to have a poor access to health care than the insured patients. The study was done specific to diabetic patients. They also had poor access to diabetes preventive care services.
The results of the study prove that with relative to health care expenditures, insured patients had a significantly higher expenditures related to health than uninsured patients as they had the benefit of reimbursement of insurance.
For the uninsured people, health care will be very expensive. According to a study, uninsured people has low medical expenses and they seem to be reluctant to seek medical services.
Success and failures of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
The success and failure of ACA and Obamacare, ultimately depends on one’s own experience and the value one has derived out of it. If one believes that the primary objective of Obamacare through ACA was to make most of the Americans insured, then for such people Obamacare and ACA is a success. It could make around 20 million Americans insured. But if the major implication is to make most of the Americans healthy, it not the high time to evaluate on the health aspect of Americans through ACA. However, there are certain visible successes and drawbacks of the system through the eyes of the public and experts.
Success of ACA
ACA has an aggressive two-way mode of covering the uninsured section. ACA provides subsidized private coverage through a wide network in 25 states. ACA is expanding through exchanges. According to Washington Post, both private and public coverage are making noteworthy and significant gains.
Households have the major customers. Coverage among households with income below $50,000 grew exponentially. The main objectives of ACA are to expand their coverage, to make the insurance companies accountable, provide health care at an affordable and low cost, provide more choices and improve the quality of care for all Americans.
It could cover twenty million people to health insurance.
The ultimate aim of Obamacare and ACA was to insure more number of Americans. In this perspective, ACA could be counted as a success where it could insure twenty million people.
Improved financial security
ACA could improve the financial security of Americans. It was found that low-income Americans are more vulnerable to economic and financial insecurities as a result of huge bills. For such low income people, ACA could improve their financial security.
Improved economic equality
Obamacare and ACA could improve the wealth inequality through the redistribution of wealth through Obamacare and ACA. ACA was one of their strategies through a health insurance schemes. While it provided subsidized rated to low and middle income people, it also raised taxes on high earners. Even though, it created controversy, it could reduce the economic disparity between rich and poor.
More comprehensive health insurance
The insurance could cover patients to access health services like mental health counselling, cancer detection and screenings and contraception cases. Thus it became a comprehensive insurance.
These objectives have contributed as success points to ACA. But at the same time, ACA has encountered failures in certain aspects.
Failure of ACA
Health insurance remains very expensive
High premium
According to a report, the ACA premium became unaffordable to certain policy holders. According to a client, the premium had increased to $792/month. Even the subsidized premium is quite high with an amount of $112.
Health care system remains complex
High processing time
It is also found that clients have faced issues in getting access to the insurance coverage through online platforms like Vermont Health Connect. ACA failed to implement a speedy processing to the online applications through its online partners.
Thus it causes a lot of stress to the clients, who wanted to renew the policies and as well as needed other benefits of the coverage.
Messy website
A majority of the clients report the website as messy even though there is an expanded coverage of the system. The website is not user-friendly.
Negative publicity
Another factor that negatively impacted ACA is the negative chain of word-of-mouth. According Raymond-Empey, it is called 10-to-1 rule. According to this rule, if someone had a bad experience with the system, he will share his bad experience with ten other people. But if someone has a good experience with the system, he will share about it only to one other person. With the present day, social media, the negative word-of-mouth had adversely impacted the reputation of ACA. This is also due to the fact that people do not want to share their experiences in part as they wish to keep their health and financial details confidential.
Lack of integration between concerned departments
There is also a lack of coordination and integration between the concerned departments.
Policy Amendments
According to ACA, it has integrated two acts; the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. Therefore, if amendments are made to the above said acts on patient protection and the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act, it could improve the ACA system too.
While it remains crucial to amend the health law, in order to decelerate the cost of health care in the United States. While it is hard to minimize and untangle the effects of recession, or any economic crisis from the health law, it has to be amended considering the rising health care expenses.
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