Healthcare policies refer to the plans, decisions, and actions performed to realize specific healthcare objectives within a given society. Some of the policies may be based on finances, delivery of the medication, access to healthcare, and quality. I am focusing on the article by Kantarjian (2016), which talks about the Affordable Care Act of 2010 initiated by the US former president Barack Obama. The policy requires most Americans to apply for health insurance and levy a penalty to those who do not. In this paper, I will also discuss the challenges of implementing the Affordable Care Act in the US health services.
Under the act, healthcare professionals are offered the opportunity to improve the delivery of patient services. The logic is to benefit from the inputs that assist deliver better health services to the increased patient population while decreasing the care expenses (Kantarjian, 2016). That means the care providers must reflect on how to create the results at the respective healthcare institutions. However, the healthcare policy exempts some groups and requires any firm employing more than 200 workers to provide health insurance.
The first challenge of implementing the policy was the inability of the contractors to perform intensive end-to-end testing for the system that was put in place to embark on the policy. The system was not able to withstand the traffic of more than 500 users just days before launch, which posed some administrative challenges and delays (Kantarjian, 2016). Secondly, consumers lacked options of purchasing drugs through an insurance agent and broker because, under the act, they can only purchase straight from the marketplace.
The new policy also has some negative implications since relatively healthy consumers would be subject to huge premiums that are not proportional to their income (Kantarjian, 2016). I feel that the Affordable Care Act would be implemented effectively if it has some adjustments especially based on income, since the taxation penalty may be unfair to some people.
Reference
Kantarjian, H. (2016). The Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, three years later: A reality check. Cancer, 123(1), 25-28. Web.