Question

The affordable care act was designed to reduce healthcare cost and increase access to care for the most vulnerable populations. In class we mostly focused on the ACA goal of increasing access. Do you agree that the affordable care act has increased access to those who most need it? Who is most in need? Why did it succeed/fail? what evidence is there that it has achieved/failed to achieve its goal? how has it achieved/failed to achieve said goal? write in complete sentences. prepare a well organized and clear response.

Answer 1

• According to Healthcare.gov the most significant changes that the Affordable Care Act initiates is lowering the coverage costs for Americans who could not afford to previously purchase insurance. Another significant reform due to the ACA is insurance companies can no longer deny coverage for preexisting conditions.
• The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has substantially decreased the number of uninsured Americans and improved access to health care, though insurance affordability and disparities by geography, race/ethnicity, and income persist. In addition, changes brought on by the ACA will no doubt impact state and federal budgets.
• There have been dramatic improvements in people’s ability to buy health plans on their own following the passage of the ACA. For adults with family incomes less than $48,500, uninsured rates dropped about 17 percentage points below their 2010 peak.
• Prior to the ACA, people without job-based health benefits had few affordable options. Because public insurance programs like Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program were available in most states only to children, pregnant women, and parents with very low incomes, people without job-based insurance were limited to purchasing coverage in the individual market and paying full premiums.
• One of the primary goals of the ACA was to reform the individual insurance market so that anyone without employer health benefits, regardless of their health status, could find and afford a plan that provided coverage at least as comprehensive as an employer plan.
• Under the ACA, insurers in the individual market now must offer a plan to all who apply, cannot charge people more based on health or gender, are limited in how much more they can charge an older person relative to someone younger, and are restricted from imposing lifetime or annual benefit limits and rescissions.
• To help consumers choose plans, all must be sold at four tiers of coverage that vary only by premium and cost-sharing amounts. The benefit package stays the same and must cover an essential set of services. Finally, people with incomes between $24,000 and $97,000 for a family of four are eligible for premium tax credits that reduce their share of premium costs.
• These changes have made a dramatic difference. In 2010, an estimated 26 million people said they either had a plan or tried to buy a health plan in the individual market over the prior three years. In 2016, 44 million tried to purchase coverage either through the marketplaces or directly from an insurance company.
• Despite its success, throughout the election the cycle, the Republicans and the president-elect have chanted to repeal and replace the ACA with “something significant.” The irony is that nobody, perhaps even the Republicans, knows about the replacement plan.
• Since the law took into effect, the data clearly show that it has increased insurance access, reduced the skyrocketing cost of health care, and improved the quality of care provided by physicians and hospitals.
• It attempted to change the way health care was delivered in our country. It deliberately encouraged providers to move away from the traditional fee for the service system, which rewards them for individual services, to value-based medicine, where they are reimbursed for the quality of care provided, not quantity.
• In this pre-ACA era, there was absolutely no incentive for physicians and hospitals to provide quality care. Instead, those who provided poor care were generating larger revenues. It was evident that America was in need of a comprehensive health care reform, a system in which quality was rewarded over quantity. Despite its flaws, many believe that the ACA is helping the American health care system diverge away from fee for service and toward value-based medicine.
• According to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, U.S. health care spending grew nearly 6 percent in 2015, reaching $3.2 trillion, or $9,990 per person. The U.S. health care expenditure in the same year as a percentage of GDP was just over 17 percent, which is higher than any other developed countries in the world.
• With the repeal of ACA, not only will millions of Americans lose their health insurance, but also the cost of health care will keep rising. This will eventually lead us to a point where we would have to ask ourselves whether we can afford what doctors do.