The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act facilitates a transformation inside the health-care system by regulating access costs and ensuring affordable and high-quality health-care coverage for all Americans. PPACA is divided into nine sections: quality and affordable health care for all; the function of public programs; humanizing the quality and efficiency of health care; chronic disease prevention and civilization of the public health care workforce; transparency and program reliability; accelerating access to innovative medical therapies; society’s existing support services and revenue provisions; each section addressing an important reform mechanism and thus outlining aspects of PPA (Act, 2010). This paper seeks to address the quality, affordable health care for all Americans section of the PPACA, which I consider to have presented a significant impact on the health and lives of all Americans.

Impacts of PPACA

PPACA through collective responsibility has enhanced the health insurance systems in the U.S by eradicating biased practices such as pre-existing condition eliminations. The PPACA restructured the health insurance schemes without increasing the health insurance premiums, which guarantees American citizens quality and affordable health care. Moreover, the quality and affordable healthcare reforms have created very significant impacts on the lives of Americans by ensuring that all individuals, through tax credits are covered by health insurance schemes, people with chronic diseases or pre-existing conditions are not discriminated by health insurance companies, forbidding rescissions of health insurance guidelines, lengthening child coverage up to 26 years and abolishing lifetime and unreasonable annual limits on benefits (Act, 2010).

Improving Health Insurance Coverage

The Quality and affordable healthcare section presented in the PPACA has been meaningful to Americans as it facilitates the improvement of the level of coverage of health insurance; hence, health insurance has reached many Americans who previously could not access health insurance, particularly the under privileged citizens and small groups across the country’s states (Act, 2010). The quality and affordable care for all Americans promotes access to care by ensuring the extension of the dependants’ age, ensuring that people with pre-existing conditions are not left out, and families earning below the set federal poverty line are covered by provisions of the ACA on tax credits. Reaching out to most Americans with health services while cutting on health systems costs, forms the basic and fundamental meaning of the quality and affordable health care.

Promoting Equality in Healthcare

Moreover, this aspect has changed the way health care is provided in the United States by promoting equality in the provision of healthcare, with the quality and affordable care, all Americans can access care that they could not previously afford due to the high cost of care and their lack of health insurance schemes. Although the move towards quality and affordable care faced some criticism, including the cost implications to the taxpayer, it is still considered as one of the most aggressive moves towards eliminating the inequalities that existed in the American society pertaining to the access of care.

Changes in Healthcare Delivery

Some of the notable changes that accompanied the implementation of the quality and affordable care included changes that involved the government providing funds for the healthcare sector improvements, changes in labor force policy, changes in the association of health care delivery and changes anticipated to make government more inventive when planning for potential health care improvement. Broadly, PPACA hastened numerous earlier federal efforts to move from quantity based to fee -for service compensation and to tie government costs for health services to provider’s routine. This focused on; reducing Medicare readmissions, compact hospital conditions like falls, infections, and pressure ulcers, put up Pay-for-Value plans for hospitals and physicians thus improving the quality of healthcare services and initiated package payments for both physicians, hospitals and post–acute care services related to a given process or condition. The ACA encouraged physicians to form an organizational planning called the Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) that promoted harmonization and incorporation of post-acute, ambulatory and inpatient services to take responsibility for cost and quality of care for Medicare beneficiaries (Blumenthal & Collins, 2014). Finally among, the changes in the workforce initiatives, conceivably the most outstanding areas of focus are on increasing the magnetism of primary care as a vocation and enhancing its accessibility to Medicaid populace.

Impact on Underprivileged Individuals and Families

The Quality and affordable aspect of Obamacare has positively impacted the underprivileged individuals and families in the United States since they are able to access affordable and quality health care services through health insurances that are fully paid. Other beneficiaries are citizens with pre-existing conditions that were previously denied health insurance by the insurance companies, as provided by their policies. Thus the abolishment of such restrictions by the Obamacare gives them rights to claim and apply for affordable health insurance though their tax credits (Blumenthal & Collins, 2014). The quality and affordable care portion has also facilitated the standardization of the health insurances premiums hence preventing marginalization of individuals with pre-existing conditions and also ensuring new and refundable tax credits for families earning less than the percentage set by federal poverty line.

Implications for Physicians

On the other hand, the ACA has affected physicians to a great extent by placing them under third-party compensation arrangements thus compromising the honor and freedom of medical career. Under the ACA, the physicians befall subject to government misunderstanding and directive, therefore, they depend on unpredictable government reimbursements for medical services hence doctors under pressure will see their jobs become more difficult (Petterson et al., 2012). Further, in a bid to increase healthcare coverage and lower costs in the healthcare delivery system, the government had to look for ways of funding the process, which led to the shifting of the burden to pharmacists, healthcare providers and taxpayers (Anderson, 2014). The increase in government expenditure mostly narrows down to increase in revenue collection and therefore increase in taxes. Therefore, although the PPACA has facilitated greater access to care through the quality and affordable care section of the Act, it has led to increased taxation to maintain the equitable provision of care. However, the benefits of the Act outweigh the cost implications; hence, it remains as one of the most important aspects of ensuring equitable and affordable access to care in America.

References

Act, A. C. (2010). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.

Anderson, A. (2014). The impact of the Affordable Care Act on the health care workforce. Backgrounder, (2887).

Blumenthal, D., & Collins, S. R. (2014). Health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act—a progress report.

Petterson, S. M., Liaw, W. R., Phillips, R. L., Rabin, D. L., Meyers, D. S., & Bazemore, A. W. (2012). Projecting US primary care physician workforce needs: 2010-2025. The Annals of Family Medicine, 10(6), 503-509.