Reference no: EM133890361

Question

ACA is known as the Affordable Care Act and is called Obama Care. Obama passed it in March of 2010, and its "key provision is to implement measures that will eliminate industry practices that include rescission and denial of coverage due to pre-existing conditions"( Health Insurance, n.d.). The strategies of the ACA of 2010 are to make sure affordable health insurance is available to the people, improve the quality of care for everyone, and reduce the cost of health care. The Obama Care guaranteed health coverage to applicants regardless of age, income, or health status and required the insurance company to include a list of free preventive healthcare services. These are some of the focus of the legislative acts.

The PAMA, which stands for Protecting Access to Medicare Act, was established in 2014 as a program to increase the rate of appropriate advanced diagnostic imaging services furnished to Medicare beneficiaries. The main focus required significant changes to how Medicare pays for clinical diagnostic lab tests, and their focus was also to bring alignment with market rates. There was also a lot of criticism of this program because of how they were calculating their prices. "Most believe the data reporting was flawed and did not result in market-based prices" (Medical Laboratory Scientist, n.d.).

Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorization Act (MACRA) of 2015 was also passed by Obama in April of 2016, and it changed the way clinicians were being rewarded for value over volume. "It also permanently repeals the sustainable growth rate (SGR) established as a framework for rewarding clinicians, streamlining quality programs into one system, and reauthorizing two years of funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program"( American College of Cardiology, 2015) in 2010.

In my opinion, the Affordable Care Act has the most impact on healthcare insurance because of the law that was put into place to protect individuals and crack down on how insurance companies would service the people. These laws were able to help so many uninsured people get insurance. It expanded Medicaid eligibility, created health insurance exchanges, mandated that Americans obtain health insurance, and prohibited insurance companies to discriminated or denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. The Affordable Care Act requires a list of essential health benefits the insurers must cover.