OBAMA CARE

Obama Care is also referred to as “Affordable Care Act” or “Patient protection and Affordable care Act”. It is an act that had the most significant influence on the United States health sector since the 1965’s Medicaid and Medicare. The act’s main agenda was to enhance the affordability of the health insurance and the overall quality of the health services. That could be achieved by reducing the number citizens who are uninsured through expansion of the private and public insurance cover along with reducing the expenditure on health for the government and the individuals (Tate, 2012). The Obama Care Act is an integrated delivery system because it has many aspects that are put together. These include availability of medical insurance, quality of medical services, and alternative of buying the insurance cover among others. The Obama Care Policy will be effective because its policies focus on the weaknesses linked with Medicare and Medicaid.

Obama Care was initially signed into law on the 23^rd March 2010. Its primary objective was to enable it to be possible to offer health care to the citizens of the United States of America. At the present, there are approximately forty four million Americans who are not able to obtain health insurance. One of main elements of the Obama Care was that such plan made expansion of Medicare and Medicaid, therefore enabling offering of health insurance to an increased number of citizens. The other part of this plan is that it offer help to the American citizens that cannot afford receiving health care.

According to Sharan, et, al, (2007), among the major problem affecting Medicare is the problem of reimbursement issues that have become very complex and thus making the cost of medical services to be high while adversely affecting the quality of the problem. This problem will be solved in the next 10 years because of the introduction of the Accountable Care Organizations that are a product of the Obama Care. There have been fundamental flaws that have made the policy makers to try to implement policies to address the flaws such as on the sustained growth rate and physical fee schedule. This problem will continue to influence the Medicare in the next 10 years because the sustained growth rate is cumulative physicians have limited control over the expenditure on drugs. The third problem is the rate of reimbursement on the physicians. There is no fixed sustained growth rate, therefore with declining rate of reimbursement on practitioners, then they shall have to increase the cost of their services, lest the government establishes a policy that will ensure the physicians are adequately compensated, the problem of quality and cost of medical services will continue to influence the economy in the next 10 years and beyond (Ranawat, Nunley & Washington Health Policy Fellows, 2008).

The most discussed negative issue linked to Obama Care is that the policy calls for having all American citizens to have the health insurance either through federally or state assisted program or through a private provider. What this implies within the long run is that in case an individual doesn’t possess health insurance, she or he has to engage in paying a tax which equivalent to 1% of his or her income in the year 2014 and thereafter, beginning from 2016, the tax will be increased to 2.5 percent of the income. The funds for covering the costs for health care have to come from someone (“Obama Care Facts”, 2013) .

The effectiveness of Obama Care Policy is seen in the long-terms objectives that more American citizens than in the recent past will obtain health insurance. Moreover, the American people will be having more rights to the health insurance organizations. Such factors will be found to fundamental for the reform in health care in the United States of America (Sharan, 2007).

Federalism refers to a system which is based on some democratic institutions and rules within which there is sharing power between the state and national levels. On other words, it is a “political concept” which employs members of a group bound by a certain covenant. The Obama Care Policy brings about federalism issues due to the fact that in a sense, there is appearing of very American’s needs to be the major concern on the surface. Indeed, on the surface, these needs appear to the main or major concern, however, the focus is not put on all the American citizens; it is on a particular sector. Consequently, there has been injecting of the federalism issue into this health care policy.

There is need to reform health care and if possible, every American citizen should have the capacity of having and maintaining health care insurance. As with whatever reform or change, there will be always its benefits and shortcomings and because of this, there will be individuals or groups that will be disappointed. However, to the present day, Obama Care is found to be the most detailed plan which has enabled bridging the gap.

References

Obama Care Facts, (2013). Retrieved from, www.obamacarefacts.com

Ranawat, A., Nunley, R. M.  & Washington Health Policy Fellows. (2008). Issues Facing America: Medicare. Retrieved from, http://www.aaos.org/news/aaosnow/aug08/reimbursement1.asp

Sharan,  A. D, et al (2007). Current issues in health policy: A primer for the orthopaedic surgeon. J Am Acad Orthop Surg, 15(1), 76-86.

Tate, N. J. (2012). ObamaCare survival guide. West Palm Beach, FL: Humanix Books.

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