Posted: April 26th, 2019
Affordable Care
Question description
NOTE: Your response must be limited to FIVE (5) pages. Be sure to respond to each part of each question.
Be sure to use citations to support your assertions. You may cite
relevant assigned readings in your response and/or information you find
on your own, so long as they are from a reputable source. (Note: Blogs
focused on political propaganda are NOT reputable; stick to respected
publications, please). This report is worth 15% of your grade.
Required reading for this report
What are the constitutional bases for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act?
1) Summary: SCOTUS Affordable Care Act Decision (Constitutional Bases)
What’s in the law?
1) Who has to pay a penalty?
2) Outline of the law’s major features, provided by HHS.gov
3) Impact: shopping the health insurance exchange
What are some observed effects of the law to date?
1) Youth Enrollment & the ACA
2) The Coverage Gap: Uninsured Poor Adults in States that Do Not Expand Medicaid
3) Where States Stand on Medicaid Expansion
4) Cities Bear the Costs of Medicaid Expansion Opt-Outs
5) Obamacare: State-Level Economic Impact on Taxpayers (Nonpartisan)
6) In TN, Opting Out of Medicaid Expansion Makes for Lousy Taxpayer ROI
7) Listen: Rural Regions Lobby for State Medicaid Expansion (transcript also available on site)
8) Obamacare’s Mandate Melt-Down (NY Post Op-Ed)
9) The Obamacare Success Stories You Haven’t Been Hearing About (LA Times Op-Ed)
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare”
for short, a piece of legislation birthed in controversy and plagued by
a difficult rollout, is still poorly understood and received by many
Americans. Some have a vague idea of what is in the law, but very little
comprehension of how the various parts were designed to function
together or how those parts affect particular individuals. Many also
don’t understand the health insurance exchange concept or how to “shop”
for insurance that is compliant with the law and still affordable. That
process is further complicated by the decision of many states to opt out
of building their own state-based health insurance exchanges or
implement a largely Obamacare-funded expansion of Medicaid to cover the
uninsured who don’t make enough to purchase ACA-compliant plans and
aren’t Medicaid-eligible under current state-specific criteria. Due to
the relative youth of the law, its initial effects – on
individuals/patients, hospitals, physicians, states, and everyone’s
wallets – are still being recorded and decoded. After reading the
assigned articles, write a position paper about what you learned about
the law. Please be sure to respond to the following questions in your
paper
What are the legal bases given by the SCOTUS opinion, supporting Congress’ power to pass the law? Explain.Do you think anything is missing from the law, or should not have been included? Explain.Explain how the indirect scheme proposed by the law proposes to bring down costs and improve quality of care. Can the legislation achieve that goal, in view of the observed
impacts and effects of the law to date on states and their citizens? Why
or why not? Explain.How do you think the changes in healthcare delivery and
reimbursement brought on by Obamacare, in conjunction with the
widespread use of EHRs and the growing capacity for EHRs to meaningfully
exchange health information between providers/practices/hospitals and
federal agencies, will impact or change the health information manager’s
role? Explain
