Discussion Health care reform 2

Discussion Health care reform 2

Discussion Health care reform 2

One feature of the US health care system is that it is the most expensive healthcare in the world with results that would not agree with the cost. It is interesting to see that the US healthcare system has tried to evolve over the years and in that evolving has actually increased the cost of healthcare (Bodenheimer & Grumbach, 2020). Competition has fueled the improvement of healthcare, but at the cost of raising healthcare costs for the individual. There are other countries that have better health care systems in place, for a fraction of the cost. It would be interesting to investigate the actual cost of care and how much insurance companies gain compared to their actual payout. There is much that could be improved in the US health care system. It could be possible that the monetary issues prevent there from being major reform to the system because companies make such a large sum of money that they do not want things to change. As the US health care system has tried to change and become seemingly more affordable through the use of policy changes there has been an increase in the amount of money that they government pays, which is actually paid by US citizens through taxes (Bodenheimer & Grumbach, 2020). It seems that whenever the US health care system is taking one step forward it is also taking two steps back.

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              The Affordable Care Act (ACA) did provide more individuals with health care coverage. This has improved the health of many individuals. One condition of the ACA is that it protects individuals with preexisting conditions from insurance companies denying care based on their condition (Healthcare.gov, n.d.). This is a great benefit for many individuals, but it comes at a cost for the insurance companies. This mandatory coverage causes insurance companies to then have to try to balance out coverage for those individuals that are ill versus those individuals who are healthy which can end up costing those individuals that are healthy to pay for others in their groups (Bodenheimer & Grumbach, 2020). This causes insurances to have to base their premiums on an experience rating versus a community rating which potentially provides unfair coverage to individuals (Bodenhemier & Grumbach, 2020). This seemingly minor change from the ACA has a ripple effect in the way that insurance companies need to charge for care and how they will determine premiums for individuals. The ACA in general is an example of how the policy making process is in the United States. Making or changing policy in the United States is a very slow, very incremental process which makes it hard to change or add policies (Walden University, LLC, 2011). The ACA was a worked on for a long time and because of the changes that were made many companies had to adjust accordingly. Health reform in the United States is difficult because there are so many entities that want to make sure that they are not being left out or hurt in decisions or policies that are being made and so they will stall or stonewall different policies if they feel that it does not benefit them. When there are policy changes then there are adjustments that need to be made and sometimes that effects so many different things that the changes end up being a negative instead of a positive, such as individuals who have to pay too much for the ACA healthcare and therefore opt out and are fined for that decision (Bodenheim & Grumbach, 2020).

References

Bodenheimer, T., & Grumbach, K. (2020).  Understanding health policy: A clinical approach (8th ed.). McGraw-Hill. 

HealthCare.gov. (n.d.) Understanding the Affordable Care Act. Retrieved from https://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/about-the-aca/index.html

Walden University, LLC. (Executive Producer). (2011). Healthcare policy and advocacy: The policy process. Baltimore: Author.

The evolution aims at making healthcare services more suitable due to the emerging healthcare conditions. Unfortunately, the evolution has made the cost of healthcare shoot (Wosik et al., 2020). Surprisingly, most uninsured Americans are now struggling to afford hiked medication bills. The advanced healthcare services that focused on making healthcare quality and patient satisfaction have turned into a nightmare for most Americans who cannot afford it. The introduction of the ACA and Medicaid programs are intervention mechanisms from the federal and the national governments.  Most American politicians understand the ramifications of the changes in the US healthcare system and the entire sector (Tran et al., 2019). Therefore, to avoid the increased inability of Americans to access quality healthcare services have forced the authority to intervene through insurance programs. Also, the policy change in the healthcare sector is targeting the most vulnerable Americans. People living with disability and the elderly population is among the targeted population.  Similarly, the government programs consider both the underemployed and unemployed Americans. 

References

Tran, B. X., Vu, G. T., Ha, G. H., Vuong, Q. H., Ho, M. T., Vuong, T. T., … & Ho, R. (2019). Global evolution of research in artificial intelligence in health and medicine: a bibliometric study. Journal of clinical medicine, 8(3), 360. https://doi.org/10.3390/jcm8030360

Wosik, J., Fudim, M., Cameron, B., Gellad, Z. F., Cho, A., Phinney, D., … & Tcheng, J. (2020). Telehealth transformation: COVID-19 and the rise of virtual care. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 27(6), 957-962. https://doi.org/10.1093/jamia/ocaa067

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law over 10 years ago and it has remained highly controversial by many law makers since its inception on March 23, 2010. Many law makers have tried to get rid of the ACA but have yet to find a health care system to replace the ACA that works with law makers and the public. Even though people may not like the ACA it has improved the health care system, provided health insurance to the uninsured, provided more prevention program to help improve the overall health of the American people. There was so much resistance to passing the ACA since the President at that time was African American and a Democratic (Silberman, 2020). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) was passed by a Democratic Congress and signed into law by a Democratic president in 2010. Republican congresspeople, governors, and Republican candidates have consistently opposed the ACA and have vowed to repeal it during every election, but more than 50% of Americans support ACA. In the first year of ACA 10 million Americans gained accessed to health insurance. The ACA also eliminated the no coverage for prior conditions, it also decreased prescription drug cost and eliminated co-pay for preventive services. When people are asked why they oppose the ACA they mention they do not like the government involved in their healthcare, but they pay into Medicare which is a mandatory federal government insurance. Despite positive changes the ACA has brought to many Americans many politicians and people oppose ACA and want to get rid of ACA(Silberman,2020). While ACA has made great strides in improving health care, health disparity remains a major problem among people of color. The recent pandemic has shown the world once again that the health care system is even though Black Americans make up 13 percent of the US population over 23 percent of COVID deaths were Black Americans (USA, 2021). 

 In spite of significant advances in the diagnosis and treatment of most chronic diseases, there is evidence that racial and ethnic minorities tend to receive lower quality of care than non-minorities and that, patients of minority ethnicity experience greater morbidity and mortality from various chronic diseases than non-minorities. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) report from 2006 showed unequal treatment “racial and ethnic disparities in healthcare exist and, because that lead to worse outcomes in many cases. Minorities were provided less access to health care intervention, sources, and funding (Egede, 2006). 

References 

Egede, L. (2006). Race, Ethnicity, Culture, and Disparities in Health care 

 Silberman, P. (2020). The Affordable Care Act: Against the Odds, It’s Working. North Carolina Medical Journal, 81(6), 364–369. https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.18043/ncm.81.6.364  

USA FACTS. (2021).US COVID-19 cases and deaths by state