The Aca's Effect On The Impoverished

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Do the Poor Stay poor? : The ACA’s Effect on the Impoverished Nicole Potilechio Wabaunsee Community College The ACA’s Effect on the Impoverished The Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obama care, requires almost all Americans to buy health insurance or pay a fine. It was designed to provide insurance for people who don’t have access to coverage through their employers. It created an online exchange where low- and middle-income earners can buy private insurance with government subsidies. The law called for the poorest of the uninsured to be covered by expanding Medicaid. Instead of letting the states pick up the tab, the federal government promised to cover all of the cost of the expansion for the first three years and no less than…show more content…
These people are projected to have incomes too high to qualify for their state’s existing Medicaid programs, but below the federal poverty level (nearly $11,500 for an individual) required to be eligible for federal subsidies to buy private coverage on the new online insurance marketplaces set up by the Affordable Care Act. Medicaid is the state-federal health insurance program for the poor. “Millions of adults will remain outside the reach of the ACA and continue to have limited, if any, options for health coverage,” the study concludes. The law provides full federal funding for three years to states that expand Medicaid to cover residents under 138 percent of the poverty level (or just under $15,900 for an individual). But the Supreme Court made that requirement effectively optional for states, and most Republican led-states have opted against expanding the…show more content…
This is a historic federalism versus state rights conflict that has defined our nation throughout our entire history and continues to divide us politically, as evidenced in the recent presidential election. Thus, we rank high in many critical care and surgical services, but rank low in overall morbidity and mortality rates due our lack of comprehensive horizontally integrated healthcare services that extend far beyond our hospital borders. We spend approximately 18.4 percent of our gross domestic product (GDP) on healthcare, which is almost double that of any other industrialized nation. Part A of the Medicare Trust Fund is due to go bankrupt in 2017. The need to offer higher healthcare quality and service at lower costs requires incentives for innovative delivery systems and new ways of working with fewer resources. Thus, the ACA encourages the following innovative models through the creation of "shared savings" programs that reward organizations that achieve pre-defined quality metrics at lower costs and other pay-for-value reimbursement methodologies. Because they live in states largely controlled by Republicans that have declined to participate in a vast expansion of Medicaid, the medical insurance program for the poor, they are among the eight million Americans who are impoverished, uninsured

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