Introduction
Health care provision is essential for all citizens. The insurance companies and health institutions must adhere to the health care act to provide excellent services to all citizens. The new program has its gains and disadvantages.
The Major Positives in the PPACA
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act provide millions of uninsured Americans with direct means to access medical care. It is affordable. The services are also of high quality through the Medicaid expansion. Employers and health care insurance providers also benefit from the services (Diaz, 2015).
The uninsured Americans, who are over half the population on the continent, can get free or low-cost health insurance. Some can also get the same quality service from out of the pocket costs. The state’s Health Insurance Marketplace is also accessible to more people than it was before the passing of the act.
It gave rise to more private coverage options. All the major medical coverage options also had to provide the minimum essential coverage (Regulations and Guidance, 2010). Therefore, it enhanced the rate and speed of service delivery to many citizens. Clients enjoy many protections. The insurance companies cannot drop anyone from coverage when one gets sick or makes honest mistakes on the application.
The Major Negatives in the PPACA
The plan encourages more taxing of the population so that the government can get more money to ensure all the people. The individual mandate and the employer mandate affect the individual citizens directly (Lee, Casalino, Fisher, & Wilensky, 2010). The individual mandate requirement makes all citizens who can afford health insurance to apply for health coverage, get an exemption, or pay a fee. One has to use a lot of energy when looking for better coverage for an individual or the family (Shafrin, 2010). It can lead to overbuying or under buying of the available packages. It still leads to the same problem where better services are very expensive.
Emerging Accountable Care Options
Accountable Care Organizations are those organizations that have come together for the purpose of offering better services to the people (Lee et al., 2010). They provide coordinated care, measure performance, and reform their payment systems. The main aim is to support physicians in doing their work of improving care.
Such organizations can influence the current healthcare system by providing accurate performance measurement reports. It will become an assurance to the public and insurance payers that the health care systems have improved greatly. It is not enough to reform health care and not change the caregivers. It has always been the norm that better care will automatically lead to high costs.
The new model has changed the whole scenario for primary physicians. The hospitals have rushed in to hire the primary doctors and other qualified personnel at all stages of their careers. The practice medicine is losing out to the more organized hospital institutions (Shafrin, 2010). The physicians also have the option of forming formidable groups to gain from this new system.
However, most of the primary care practices are losing business because of the initiative. Another challenge is how to identify the best physicians. It is because of the gain from the system and offering service to a greater percentage of the population. Rather than specializing in a field that is profitable, the physicians begin to think about the quality and how many people they can serve.
The health care act has both benefits and constraints. The managers of the initiative can provide better services for the American people. The Accountable Care Organizations need to embrace primary care physicians.
References
Diaz, F. (2015). How obamacare will affect you.” Neurosurgery, 62(3), 81-91. Web.
Lee, T., Casalino, L., Fisher, E., & Wilensky, G. (2010). Creating accountable care organizations. New England Journal of Medicine, 363(15), 23. Web.
Regulations and Guidance. (2010). Web.
Shafrin, J. (2010). What are accountable care organizations. Web.
