Response to Nicole Adorno
****************Please respond to the discussion below add citations and references 🙂 ********
In 2010 the Affordable Care Act which some refer to as “Obama Care” was signed. It was created to allow coverage for all Americans in hopes of reducing the overall cost of healthcare. It was brought into place because the United States had one of the highest costs for health care and many Americans were without insurance. “Figures from 2010 indicate that approximately 50 million people (16% of the population) had no public or private health insurance coverage, while national spending on medical care in the United States at the time was close to USD3 trillion a year.”(Mark A Hall, 2014)
The health care transformation was created to try and allow for coverage for all individuals. Many people have private insurance through their employer at an affordable cost, but for some it is too costly and they simply can’t make ends meet after paying for health insurance. Medicare covers individuals 65 years and older and people with disabilities. Medicaid is provided by the state and government to assist the population who can’t afford insurance or meet the requirements. Many Americans fall into the middle of this system and are still not being helped. The working middle class family seems to suffer the most. They can’t afford private or commercial insurance, are not 65 years old or disabled, and make too much money to qualify for medicaid. As nurses we must educate every patient we come into contact with by providing resources and literature to make them aware of the services available to them. Many public health care facilities accept private insurance, medicaid, and non-insured patients. Most times if a patient is without insurance they screen them to see if they qualify for medicaid and if not charge them a sliding scale fee based on their insurance. Some patients can’t afford even the insurance provided by the Affordable Care Act and learn that the providers in the plan are not always in their immediate area. The marketplace does have some promising solutions to promote a better solution for the healthcare issue. It will assist providers to utilize a healthcare team, patients to buy into their own care, and employers to offer benefit packages to their employees. By treating patients while they are well and providing preventative care, we are more likely to prevent multiple chronic illnesses.
Mark A Hall, Richard Lord Obamacare (2014): What The Affordable Care Act Means For Patients And Physicians BMJ 2014;349:g5376 doi: 10.1136/bmj.g5376
Clayton Christensen, Andrew Waldeck, Rebecca Fogg(2017): Industries Horizon,How Disruption Can Finally Revolutionize p2.Healthcare.https://www.christenseninstitute.org/blog/author/r…
