Health care reform to address access - Essay Example

The Affordable Health Care Act THE AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE ACT The Affordable Care Act will warrant access to quality, affordable health care to all the Americans, and develop individual access to innovative medical therapies. Further, the legislation will establish transformation within the health systems that will be essential in containing costs. Quality and affordable health care is significant in improving access to health care, in the sense that, it calls for immediate improvements in eliminating lifetime and unreasonable annual limits on benefits, offers help to those uninsured because of pre-existing conditions, and aids in administration simplification to enhance lower health system costs.

Nevertheless, it will enhance access to affordable healthcare for children, cancer patients, and underserved communities, through drug discounts propelled by 340B programs. Moreover, the legislation stands to improve the quality and efficiency of healthcare by availing medical services to all individuals in America and especially those who have joined Medicare and Medicaid. There will also be sustainable efforts to improve the delivery of care and support research, which will inform clients on issues relating to patient outcomes, and patient models will be developed and distributed.

Health care practitioners and patients residing from rural areas will recognize the tremendous improvements together with advancements in payment accuracy. In addition, there will be improvements in access to innovative medical therapies through innovation and biologics price competition. With the establishment of the legislation, FDA will be in a position to license biological products that are shown to be either biosimilar or interchangeable to reference product (Kaiser, 2014).The basic values that underlie the approach to solving the access to health care problems include; focusing on provisions to expand medical cover for individuals and families in the United States, enacting measures to control health care and related medical costs to make it affordable to all individuals in America, and continuous improvement health care delivery system.

The stated values do not align to any specific political perspective, but instead touch on the health benefit of every American citizen. As a policy maker, I would use the following approach to ensure success, establishment of market reforms, creating of insurance market places, and expansion of Medicaid programs (Healthcare.gov., 2014). This is because; every state requires compliance with market reforms to ensure access to cover for young adults, provision of cover for minimum set of health benefit and other consumer protection measures.

The state should understand the existing and future market dynamics in amending the insurance laws; the state should also, expand the Medicaid programs to widen its spectrum. The state health care plan has featured the above approach in order to implement successfully the Affordable Health Care Act (Healthcare, 2014). It is possible to increase access of quality and safe health care, and at the same time contain necessary costs. The 2010 health legislation outlines guidelines on how to achieve quality and efficiency in healthcare by requesting American citizens and legal residents to own a health insurance cover starting from 2014 with an emphasis that those without cover will pay tax penalty of over $695 per year.

A state-based American Health Benefits Exchanges established, enable individuals to purchase insurance covers with premiums and cost sharing credits available to both individual and families with a ranging income of 133 – 400% of the federal poverty level (Healthcare.gov., 2014). Correspondingly, there will be creation of separate “Exchanges” to enable small businesses to purchase insurance cover. The guidelines further provide requirements to employers to pay penalties for those employees who get tax credits for health insurance via Exchange, excluding undersized employers.

It further requires employers with more than 200 employees to register employees within health insurance plans of the employer (Kaiser, 2014). Additionally, there will be expansion of public programs whereby Medicaid will be expanded to all individuals who are below 65 years old, and with an income of up to 133% (Healthcare.gov., 2014). Those people will an income of over 133%, and fail to have employer-sponsored insurance, have the chance of obtaining cover through state health insurance Exchange.

Tax related changes to finance the health program would involve elimination of tax deduction to employers who obtain Medicare part D retiree drug subsidy payments, increase in tax rate of Medicare part A on wages by 0.9%, on wages, which exceed $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for married couples. Furthermore, there is an increase of tax rate on distributions from a health savings account, which do not support medical expenses by 20%. Similarly, the amount of contributions made to flexible spending account for medical expenses will be limited to $2,500 per year that will be increased annually depending on the cost of living adjustment (Kaiser, 2014).

ReferencesHealthcare.gov. (2014). U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Retrieved on 21 Feb 2014 from, http://kff.org/health-reform/Kaiser, F. (2014). Summary of Coverage Provisions in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.Retrieved on 21 Feb 2014 from,http://kff.org/health-reform/fact-sheet/summary-of-new-health-reform-law/Kaiser, F. (2014). Summary of Coverage Provisions in the Affordable Care Act. Retrieved on 21 Feb 2014 from,http://kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/summary-of-coverage-provisions-in-the-patient/>