The current trends show that the Affordable Care Act is improving the welfare and general health of people with lower incomes by giving them access. Traditionally, patients with medical insurance have larger access to these services than underinsured and uninsured. However, by increasing the taxes and the insurance costs, the ACA has made insurance and thus health care services much more available to the poor, the minorities, and the immigrants through subsidies and special programs, thus improving their health care situation (Tavernise & Gebeloff, 2016).
However, while access to insurance has increased, there hasn’t been a notable improvement in the quality of the health care services provided according to the healthcare measurements. This shows that policies of interprofessional collaboration and improved health information exchange haven’t had the anticipated effect on the quality of health care (Gardner, 2015).
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has offered significant improvement in the treatment of immigrants and immigrant children. The Act makes all lawful immigrants entitled to health coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace, which covers more than twenty percent of the young and middle-aged uninsured population (Lee, 2013).
The ACA, in combination with the Medicare and Medicaid Advantage plans, provides new opportunities to manage income, race, ethnicity, and language data, to improve Interprofessional Collaboration and the Health Information Exchange, and to improve the quality of service for both well-off patients and the patients in the mentioned above categories. In addition to those changes, the program also increases the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program for children of different ethnicities, covering the gap that was present in 2009 (Health Coverage by Race and Ethnicity: The Potential Impact of the Affordable Care Act, 2013).
The situation has changed considerably from the state described in the excerpt. The out-of-pocket method has been made completely ineffectual despite its apparent simplicity. The fines for not possessing any insurance destroy any benefits it had. Thus, private, employment-based and Government subsidized insurance has become the principal methods of financing one’s healthcare.
As a consequence of health insurance shifting to government-enforced, the demand for commercial health insurance has increased. This creates new opportunities for the insurance companies to exploit both their direct consumers and the employers who provide employment-based coverage. Since the companies no longer have an incentive to negotiate better deals with customers, they can keep increasing their premiums (Belk, 2015).
This situation had to be amended through new insurance policies, which placed people who have lost insurance canceled as a result of the policies in a special category, offering them benefits when getting new insurance. However, this does not completely amend the situation (How Does the Affordable Care Act Affect People Who Buy Health Insurance in the Individual Market, 2013). As a result, the people who benefit the most from the Affordable Care Act are those in the categories of the population covered by the government subsidies.
The changes introduced by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act take some of the financial stress away from both the health care providers and the patients, by ensuring that the costs are covered by the insurance companies or the government.
However, private health insurance is quite expensive and beyond the reach of many people, and not all employers provide their insurance, which leaves a lot of people struggling financially when it comes to obtaining medical services (The Uninsured and the Difference Health Insurance Makes, 2012). And, as the article shows, it isn’t even the case that all of the insurance providers grant reimbursements for medical services, creating a complicated situation for the patients and the healthcare organizations. On the other hand, the system of paying for performers seems to be working, as the professionals in the field acknowledge a decrease in costs spent on healthcare due to a higher quality of service and fewer cases of patients returning for treatment (Sebelius, 2013).
References
Belk, D. (2015). The Obamacare Paradox: The Real Reason Health Insurance Companies Don’t Like the ACA. Web.
Gardner, M. R. (2015). Interprofessional Collaboration and Interprofessional Education. Pediatrics and Neonatal Nursing, 2(2), 70-71.
Health Coverage by Race and Ethnicity: The Potential Impact of the Affordable Care Act. (2013). Web.
How Does the Affordable Care Act Affect People Who Buy Health Insurance in the Individual Market? (2013). Web.
Lee, E. Y. (2013). A Simple Guide To The Affordable Care Act For Immigrants. Web.
Sebelius, K. (2013). The Affordable Care Act At Three: Paying For Quality Saves Health Care Dollars. Web.
Tavernise, S., & Gebeloff, R. (2016). Immigrants, the Poor and Minorities Gain Sharply Under Affordable Care Act. Web.
The Uninsured and the Difference Health Insurance Makes. (2012). Web.