The Affordable Care Act: Its Successes, Failures, and Future Prospects

The Affordable Care Act: Its Successes, Failures, and Future Prospects
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The Affordable Care Act: Its Successes, Failures, and Future Prospects
Introduction
The Affordable Care Act, also recognized as Obamacare, was first enacted in March of 2010 as a comprehensive health care reform for the citizens in the USA. The law's main focus was to make affordable health insurance more available to the general public and expand the Medicaid program, thus allowing it to cover all the adults whose income comes below 138% of the federal poverty levels. The law also aims to support the medical care of innovative mediums that equally contribute to lowering the general cost for healthcare (Fording & Patton, 2020). The act advocated for expanded eligibility for the Medicaid program and relatively initiated the creation of a new marketplace where key citizens who lack employment would buy insurance coverage directly from key providers. Following the law, all adults in the USA should have access to a health insurance cover failure to pay a certain fine.
For moderate-income individuals, the act offers premiums subsidies that help them buy the policy within other marketplaces. Since its inception, the Affordable Care Act has managed to oversee well over 20 million individuals receiving health insurance packages while 24million individuals gain access to subsidies free care as provided by the marketplace tax creditors and the expansion of the Medicaid program (Fording, & Patton, 2020). While the successful effects of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act continue to be on display, the law has battled numerous calls for repeal along with the replacement with alternative reforms, thus allowing for modification and addressing of other goals. This paper evaluates the success and failures of the Affordable Care Act right from its inception in 2010 while offering a good discussion on the need to either repeal the law or rather amend the aspects bringing along controversy.
Background Information
Under the key federal provisions provided by the Affordable care act, the expansion of insurance coverage, the act targeted an expansion of health insurance coverage to about 32 million Americans living under uninsured status (Fording, & Patton, 2020). The basic provisions by the law include: having employers cooperate in having to take responsibility for ensuring their employees, provision of tax credits for smaller businesses to enable them to cover costs for offering health insurance to employees, requiring individuals to adopt insurance with exceptions of key factors, for instance, religious beliefs and possible financial hardships, creation of temporary risk pools for individuals who are unable to afford insurance within the market as a result of preexisting health conditions, and even requiring that the insurance plan provide coverage for the young adults.
In terms of increasing consumer insurance protection, the act focused on limiting the use of annual caps and prohibiting lifetime monetary caps specifically meant for insurance coverage. Relatively the protection advocated from the inclusion of children with underlying medical conditions within the insurance plan. On the same note, the insurance plans were prohibited from practicing cancelation of coverage with the specific exception on fraud cases. In addition, the act focused on providing informed state reviews for insurance premium increases among different market providers (McMorrow et al., 2020). Similarly, creating the emphasis on wellness and prevention was done by establishing working prevention and public health funding mechanism that would fund states that ensure the free delivery of prevention services in health care facilities. The law relatively advocated for health insurance plans to cover aspects of preventive care, fr instance, immunization with no cost-sharing and issuing special screening for conditions, such as high cholesterol, higher blood pressure, cancer, and even diabetes. The law equally advocated for an increased share of Medicaid payment for different preventive services by 1%.
Improvement of health system performance and quality integrated the need for conducting comparative research to inform the efficacy of various Medicaid treatments, adoption of demonstration projects to develop effective payment mechanisms for improved efficiency, and results (McMorrow et al., 2020). The law equally advocated for increased investment in health information and technology for up-to-date care delivery. In addition, it relatively adopted efficient data reporting and collection mechanisms addressing existing disparities in ethnicity, gender, geographic location, and even disability status. Other provisions of the law included curbing the constantly increasing health costs through the proviso of oversight into health insurance premiums and practices.
How ACA Affects the Population and Healthcare Delivery System
The Affordable Care Act comes to an essential medical aid to many Americans and thus has influenced the American population and the healthcare delivery system in many ways. For instance, the act has ensured increased health insurance coverage to over 40 million, with most individuals benefiting from the subsidies and expanding the Medicaid program. The affordable care act has enabled people from all income levels to obtain insurance coverage at their pocket-friendly rates, integrate the children into the insurance plans, and lead to reduced instances of racial segregation in the health insurance system (Levy et al., 2020). The Affordable Care Act has enlisted the protection of individuals living with pr...