Healthcare Reform, Integration and Reflection

Health care Reform/Integration and Reflection
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Health care Reform/Integration and Reflection
Healthcare in the United States (U.S.) has undergone significant changes over the years. The changes are aimed at optimizing health care delivery and improving patient outcomes. One way that health care has changed in the U.S.is passing of legislation that increases health care coverage. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (PPACA, or ACA), came into effect in 2010. It is important to explore the impact of PPACA in the health care industry.
The intended purpose of PPACA was to improve access to care. ACA aimed to expand health coverage through Medicaid and various state-run marketplaces or exchanges (Ogundipe et al., 2015). The legislation allowed tax relief to middle-income individuals qualifying for assistance. Expansion of Medicaid means that states can expand availability of insurance to individuals, who were previously not eligible such as those with high income, single, and non-disabled adults. Adults with income below 138 percent of the federal poverty line can be covered through Medicaid (Collins et al., 2017). However, not all states have expanded Medicaid. The other purpose of PPACA is to make insurance available to all people. The legislation created the individual mandate that requires all citizens to have health insurance. Individuals can purchase through Medicaid or purchase it for themselves if they earn high income, making them ineligible. The law sets a tax penalty for individuals that fail to purchase their own insurance (Silvers, 2013). ACA also aimed to reduce health care costs. Lack of health insurance means that most people sought health care services when the disease had progressed and as such lower preventive services were utilized.
PPACA is likely to meet its intended purpose because most Americans from the low-income bracket would be willing to take health insurance. Before ACA, the uninsured rate stood at 48.6 million adults, which is about 15.7 percent of the country’s population (Ogundipe et al., 2015). Americans who often fail to seek health services because of lack of insurance are likely to enroll through Medicaid or purchase their own health insurance. However, the intended purpose may also not be achieved because of political factors and state rights. While the federal government commits to provide funding through Medicaid, many states have not accepted the offer (Ogundipe et al., 2015). Large groups of poor Americans remain uninsured because a state may not have expanded the Medicaid program. This means it would be difficult to achieve coverage for almost all Americans as was initially aimed by the legislation.
From the findings, PPACA has met its intended pu...