Obamacares Value-Based Remuneration - Essay Example

'Obamacare’s Value-Based Remuneration' is a wonderful example of a paper on the health system. 
The issue of reimbursement of health care is an emerging issue in the process of reforming the health sector (Atlas, 5). Reimbursement is the method that the providers of health care use as a standard mode of payment. The payer of the medical bills is either an insurance company or a government entity.

The continued trade-off experienced between the profit-making and the organizational efficiency is of concern as it hinders the freedom of both providers and patients (Pipes, 23). The administration has the sole capability to decide the procedure to be followed in the settlement of medical bills. This distinguishes the forms of payment into two, either retrospective or prospective payments. The retrospective payments majorly maximize on the provider and patient freedoms in the process of making the best decision on which procedure of payment is best for the individuals (Atlas, 15). Prospective payments, on the other hand, the freedoms of the patient are squashed, and the payer has the freedom to choose the costs that will be incurred.

Obamacare is set to affect every citizen. The healthcare system is set to centralize the power to the federal state. It also creates a neutralized health care system that fits all the people regardless of their financial status (Pipes, 17). This healthcare plan sets to fulfill President Barrack Obama’s promise to increase the middle-class Americans’ tax by a massive amount. The effects of the Obamacare shield no American citizen from feeling the brunt of the far-reaching penalty of the legislation (Pipes, 19).

Obamacare scrubs off the Medicare Advantage that initially granted senior citizens with medical care. The effects of the program will manipulate more than half of the seniors by making healthcare expensive through imposing taxes on drug companies (Atlas, 7).

Obamacare’s choice to switch to value-based reimbursement compels health providers to alter how they sort the medical bills (Pipes, 32). Their payments are made based on the quality or value of the healthcare that a hospital offers, instead of the initial form of payment that was based on the visits to the facility and the number of tests ordered by the specialists (Roberts, 12).

The use of value-based reimbursement is lauded for encouraging improved qualities of health provision but for the underdeveloped health facilities, the financial burden will arise due to lower reimbursement and financial penalties that come with issuing substandard services. The revenue mix will shift as the number of commercial players in the sector shrinks to avoid penalties (Roberts, 15).

The transition from the initial style of payment to the proposed new Obamacare value-based payment causes financial lag in the health sector. Most of the value-based reimbursement programs are structured along with the savings model, as it touches more on the middle class. Tracking the previous records of payments in the health sector as big as America’s is a problem (Pipes, 9). It is also difficult for Medicare to keep monitoring the transition from the fee to service into the value-based reimbursement.

The variety of measures that the hospitals should meet is wide and universal. This means that it is increasingly difficult to determine which penalties to impose on a hospital that fails to meet the quality benchmark. This failure may be because of geographical location or the low number of patients visiting the facility (Roberts, 13). It acts to task the providers to meet the standards while they cut costs and benefit the patients. It is unethical to penalize hospitals for their lack of efficiency, as competition in the health sector is risky for the well-being of citizens (Pipes, 17).