Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act. Research Paper

Patient Protection and the Affordable Care Act
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The Affordable Care Act
According to Blumenthal, Abrams, & Nuzum (2015), the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has alleviated the health care in the United States. From February 15, 2015, there are around 11.7 million U.S. citizens who have availed a health plan based on the health insurance marketplaces because ACA offered subsidies when the insurance is planned through the marketplaces. Additionally, ACA allowed the states to expand the Medicaid programs which are subsidized by the federal government through 2016. The subsidies included the adults are at or below 138% of the poverty line in the U.S. Furthermore, the ACA covered young U.S. citizens under the policies of their parents. The age of coverage is until 26 years-old, regardless of their status (i.e., dependents or taxpayers). Because of the efforts of U.S. President Barack Obama, over 30 million U.S. citizens were able to avail of insurance coverage and customer protection.
Impact on Nursing
The Patient Protection and ACA obliged the nursing industry to promote innovation, care coordination, and transformational leadership as the primary stakeholders in the establishment of the cost containment in the following generations. These two also compelled the nurses to step-up the quality of care and patient access (Cleveland, Motter, & Smith, 2019).
The ACA features the essentials in the nursing industry and showed the disconnected nature of health care delivery in the U.S. Major health reforms have a significant impact in the insurance industry due to the challenges faced concerning quality reporting, expansion of regulations, and penalties for the poor quality of care. These instances open the possibilities for the nurses to share their expertise. These enactments provided a platform for the nurses to expand patient education programs and to plan with the administrators. Through their help, the insurance industry saved more money and redirect these for better population management (Cleveland, Motter, & Smith, 2019).
Also, these two paved a way for a hastened development of advanced practice roles and the expansion of nursing education. The new curricula of the incoming nurses included administrative and policy skills development to aid the insurance industry concerning proper administrative practice. As a result, there is a massive improvement in nursing leadership positions in all insurance companies and health care organizations (Cleveland, Motter, & Smith, 2019).
Moreover, the nurses, especially the advanced practice registered nurses (APRNs), were granted to practice the full scope of their education to augment providing solutions to the issues related to the Patient Protection and ACA. The formation of nurse-led community-based transition programs (CCTP) was widespread across the country to help the government coordinate the care for the susceptible populations and to reduce the 30-day hospital re-admission procedures. This provided a positive impact to the Americans as well as the nurses for it reduced the re-admission rates to 13.9% in an 8,000 population of patients. This helped the nurses develop excellent practic...