US Healthcare System from Strategic Perspective
The overall goal of the Session Long Project is to examine health care delivery in the United States from a strategic perspective.
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, or in short Affordable Care Act, changed the landscape of the health care industry. For this assignment, read the article “Information asymmetries and risk management in healthcare markets: The U.S. Affordable Care Act (ACA) in retrospect” by Mendoza, and write a paper to respond to the following questions:
- Discuss the “moral theory” contained in this article.
- Explain whether you agree or disagree with the author that the ACA was an answer to health care accessibility.
- Explain whether you believe or do not believe that ACA will improve patient care.
- Discuss what you think President Biden should do with the ACA.
- Discuss what strategies you would recommend to deal with economic realities of health care based on your own research.
Length: Submit a 3-page paper, not including the cover page and the reference list.
SLP Assignment Expectations
Assessment and Grading: Your paper will be assessed based on the performance assessment rubric. You can view it under Assessments at the top of the page. Review it before you begin working on the assignment. Your work should also follow these Assignment Expectations.
Conventional Risk Theory
Name
Institution Affiliation
Course
Professor
Date
United States Health Care System
Generally, conventional risk theory holds that health insurance is purchased when a patient is at an adverse risk and that all of the moral hazards are insufficient. The article Information Asymmetries and Risk Management in Healthcare Markets: The U.S. Affordable Care Act in Retrospect, by Mendoza, discusses the conventional risk theory which state that full insurance causes increased and sometimes unnecessary healthcare consumption since it is supported by a third party, in this case, insurer and not a physician or the patient ( Mendoza,2017). The difference between the high costs to produce healthcare based on the market price and the low value to the insured causes inefficiency as it the relatively subsidized or free.
According to Mendoza, Affordable Health Care Act ( ACA) was the way to go to improve accessibility to healthcare. I disagree with him as some of the reforms mean better to the insurer rather than the consumer. The provision of the ACA was meant to improve the quality of healthcare and constrain the cost by involving insurance. After the implementation of the act, the insurers were to retain the existing medicare system and accept all the applications without considering the existing conditions or demographic conditions. This meant that everybody was eligible for insurance coverage.
Some of the ACA reforms were informed by behavioral decisions and insurance measures that evolved to avoid risk such as cost sharing and managed care. For instance majority of people enrolled for insurance to over 16 million which led to overutilization of health insurance. This meant the cost of providing medicare decreased while the workload from nurses and doctors remained the same. This meant that people could access healthcare but with a reduced quality.
Further, the health subsidy from insurance was funded by taxes and medicare provisional. This meant that the insurance can manipulate consumption to increase their benefit. Further, ACA does not clearly define hazards according to conventional theory. Everybody is eligible for insurance coverage with or without preexisting conditions. With the limited information, insurance companies benefit from ACA compared to the patients.
Will ACA Improve Healthcare...