The Affordable Care Act is also know as Obamacare. This act was created with the intent to help get insurance to those that were uninsured. According to Mason (2016), the ACA provisions aim to increase access to care; change the culture of health care from one of cure to one of health promotion and illness prevention; mitigate barriers to practice for primary care providers of all disciplines; capitalize on the skill and expertise of nursing in areas of leadership, practice, research, and innovation; and, through these mechanisms, improve population health outcomes (p. 193). Many felt that the AHCA would cause many of the previously insured Americans to lose insurance coverage. With many people losing coverage, this would create a problem in the poor community with the ability to have access to health care. The AHCA failed in its first attempt due to lack of proper planning. Although I feel that there are parts of the ACA that need change, we have to fully analyze the effects that this would have on the consumers. I personally feel that the government needs to step in on the reimbursement rates that insurance companies have to pay. I currently work and live in one of the poorest counties in South Carolina. We have one hospital in the entire county. I have had to wear many hats working at Williamsburg Regional Hospital. One of these hats include investigating the reimbursement of insurance versus the cost of the procedure. We have had to stop performing procedures due to the simple fact that the reimbursement rate does not cover the cost to the hospital. Mason, D. J., Gardner, D. B., Outlaw, F. H., & OGrady, E. T. (2016). (Seventh edition.). Elsevier Peer 2 Healthcare reform has made several efforts by
the federal government earliest date known was 1984, but was not considered successful until 2010. ACA created the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation that was intended to facilitate value-based approaches to healthcare primarily by creating and piloting alternative payment models (rsch, Rosenkrantz, Nicola, Harvey, Duszak, Silva, Barr, Klucznick, Brook & Manchikanti, 2017). ACA has two goals in mind such as increasing the number of insured individuals, and reducing the cost of healthcare. These goals were met by expanding Medicaid and creating the exchange marketplace (rsch et al., 2017). As this bill was intended to help the uninsured, it actually increased the deductibles and out of pocket expenses for those with the exchange insurance and employer based plans (rsch et al., 2017). AHCA has mentioned that individual plans, the premiums would be based on age with a 5% increase for elderly as ACA has a 3% increase. In my opinion, the reason ACHA has failed is because of the increase in the population that lost insurance and had no additional insurance or means to pay. Although, it really seems like both bills want to point the finger at each other and say that it is because of pre-existing conditions or stipulations imposed in the bill that caused the failure. Regardless of the why, we have to figure out some way to benefit each American that is cost effective and provides the much needed healthcare coverage. Reference rsch, J. A., Rosenkrantz, A. B., Nicola, G. N., Harvey, H. B., Duszak, R., Silva, E., Barr, R. M., Klucznik, R. P., Brook, A. L., & Manchikanti, L. (2017). Contextualizing the first-round failure of the AHCA: down but not out. , (6), 595600. https://doi.org/10.1136/neurintsurg-2017-013136