Introduction
The high cost of healthcare with dwindling quality has become a significant challenge to many countries across the continent and the U.S. being one of them. As a result, many plans for health reforms have been suggested including the Affordable Care Act (ACA), with an attempt to address these challenges of quality, affordability, cost, and accessibility of healthcare. The ACA (also called Obamacare) was signed into law by President Obama on March 3, 2010. Its overriding purpose was to minimize the spending of the federal government on health care. Research shows that since the implementation, the ACA has changed the U.S. health care significantly, by making insurance available to almost 95 percent of the legal American population. This achievement is towards one of the main reasons why ACA was implemented.
ACA Primary Quality Initiatives
According to Rosenbaum (2011), the ACA act has ten titles which explain its quality initiatives. Amadeo (2016) adds that among the ten sections are four titles which outline ACA primary initiatives, which include; affordable and quality health care for the entire U.S. citizens; chronic disease prevention and public health improvement; public programs role; and improving health care efficiency and quality. First, affordable and quality healthcare for all U.S. citizens is an initiative to ensure health insurance is available to all Americans through a shared responsibility, and this was tailored towards reducing health care cost. The actions to achieve it include eliminating discriminatory acts in health insurance market such as the exclusion of pre-existing conditions without increasing insurance premiums, and giving tax credits to families and individuals will guarantee insurance affordability to every U.S. citizens (Amadeo, 2016).
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Second, public program role is to ensure the expansion of Medicaid eligibility to persons with lower income through enhancing the federal support for Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), improving services offered by Medicaid, and simplifying enrollment for Medicaid and CHIP. Additionally, through providing new long-term supports and services, and Medicaid quality improvement for both providers and patients among others. The federal responsibility is to assume much of this expansion cost. Third, improving efficiency and quality of healthcare initiative entails linking medical practitioners’ service payment to good quality outcomes, making substantial investments to enhance delivery and quality health care, and supporting research to ensure that consumers are informed about patient results that come from different approaches to care delivery and treatment (Amadeo, 2016). Moreover, improving payment accuracy, encouraging building and disseminating new models for patient care and developing recommendations by a Medicare Advisory Independent Board to ensure fiscal stability in a long-term (Rosenbaum, 2011).
Fourth, the initiative to prevent chronic diseases and public health improvement entails new investment fund for prevention and public health to support the new prevention council, removing barriers to accessing prevention services from clinics and healthy community development. This initiative is majorly aimed at reducing the emergency room visits which is the most expensive treatment in the U.S. (Amadeo, 2016).
Goals and Objectives
According to Hellerstedt (2013), the ACA goals and objectives which include to expand the coverage of health insurance, to expand access to improved quality care, and to reduce cost while improving healthcare efficiency.
Goal 1: To expand the coverage of health insurance- to make a near-universal health to all people especially those with low income and the vulnerable group. It will be achieved through a shared responsibility among employers, government, and individuals (Hellerstedt, 2013). This goal will be measured by the statistics of U.S. citizens under the insurance cover annually or semi-annually. Moreover, it will be measured by an increase in the number of insured people with indicates of a positive achievement and vice versa.
Goal 2: To expand access to improved quality care- to make health care services accessible and affordable to all Americans, through ensuring that the all citizens get insured as well paying health practitioners based on the quality of outcome for their services rather than just fee-for-service (Hellerstedt, 2013). This goal will be measured by annual or semi-annual statistics concerning mortality rate in the country, that is, reduction in mortality rate is a positive indication for the goal achievement.
Goal 3: To reduce the rising health care cost while improving efficiency- this will be achieved through disease prevention rather than treatment, and also decreasing patient emergency room visits by expanding health insurance to enable patients to seek medical attention before their condition worse. Reducing emergency room visits will help cut down the cost of healthcare because it has been proven to be the most expensive treatment (Hellerstedt, 2013). This goal will be measured by a reduction in the annual spending of the federal government on health care.
Conclusion
ACA quality initiatives and goals would bring a substantive change on the US citizens and economy if implemented as evident from the discussion. This change would be towards addressing the long-term healthcare problems such as cost, quality, affordability, and accessibility. Therefore, legislators should strive to implement the other sections in the act which are not yet effective to experiment the change the law may bring to the nation.
References
Amadeo, K. (2016, September 15). Obamacare Act: A Summary of Its 10 Titles. The balance . Retrieved December 20, 2017, from https://www.thebalance.com/obamacare-bill-3306057
Hellerstedt, W. (2013). The Affordable Care Act: What Are Its Goals and Do We Need It?. Retrieved December 20, 2017, from http://www.epi.umn.edu/mch/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/ACA-Overview.pdf
Rosenbaum, S. (2011). The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act: implications for public health policy and practice. Public health reports , 126 (1), 130-135.
