Affordable Health Insurance and Access to Care
Through the ACA, health insurance to the American people and their access to care has been implemented. The number of uninsured people who have gained coverage since 2010, ranging from 7.0 million to 16.4 million. Besides, surveys show that the newly insured are pleased with their coverage.
Three-quarters of those seeking new appointments with primary care physicians or specialists secured one within four weeks or less. Fewer Americans have report problems with medical bills and financial barriers to obtaining care. In a nutshell, the law has improved the availability of health insurance. (Branham & DeLeire, 2019).
The ACA law has provided federal governments with the choices to extrapolate their Medicaid initiatives to include all eligible people with incomes at or below one hundred and thirty-eight percent. As a result, their membership has increased. Besides, approximately 10.8 million additional Americans have enrolled in Medicaid since the enactment of the ACA. (Branham & DeLeire, 2019).
Additionally, nearly three million previously uninsured young Americans have gained coverage under their parents’ policies. Affordable Care Act required all private insurers and employers that offer dependent coverage to cover children until they are twenty-six years of age, regardless of whether they are dependent for tax purposes.
Moreover, an estimated eight million to twelve million Americans who have health insurance outside federal marketplaces benefit from ACA regulations that prevent insurers from discriminating against persons with preexisting conditions or from terminating policies once persons become ill. (Branham & DeLeire, 2019).
The ACA and the Health Care Provision
The ACA has changed and improved health care delivery in changing the way the government pays for health care. It has changed healthcare delivery, changed workforce policy, and made the government more innovative in pursuing future health care reforms.
To briefly highlight The Affordable Care Act extrapolated earlier initiatives of the (CMS) that penalized hospitals for egregious avoidable threats to Medicare patients’ safety. Again, the ACA created Medicare payment incentives for hospitals and physicians to improve their performance on various quality and cost metrics other than hospital-acquired conditions and readmission (Polsky et al. 2018).
In sum, besides the affordable Health Insurance and Access to Care and the Health Care Delivery System acts benefits, the ACA has transformed and supported primary care, initiating a variety of programs to improve the delivery of better health care. In addition, several workforce initiatives under the ACA have increased the attractiveness of primary care as a career and enhanced availability to Medicaid populations.
Similarly, with full federal funding, ACA provided all state Medicaid programs to pay primary care physicians at Medicare rates. Besides, the ACA took a meaningful step by creating the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) within CMS. Funded at $1 billion per year for ten years, CMMI holds the legal power of various experiments to better quality and reduce cost within its initiatives.
References
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