The Affordable Health Care Act: Healthcare Reform Policy By Obama (Research Paper Sample)

The Affordable Health Care Act Student Name Institution Instructor Date The Affordable Health Care Act The Affordable Care Act is an American healthcare reform policy signed into law by president Obama on March 23, 2010. The policy seeks to facilitate patient protection as well as provide affordable healthcare services to all American citizens. As such, the achievement of efficient health security goes along with the improvisation of comprehensive health insurance reforms that will include the minors and the marginalized in the society (Furlow, 2015). The main objectives of the Affordable Care Act aimed at expanding the patient coverage, decline the healthcare costs amongst the patients, create more options as well as foster for efficiencies and quality of care for all the citizens of America. It is also critical to note that contrary to the past times, the policy entitles the Insurance companies to accountability for the covers offered to patients. Under the Affordable Care Act, there are two pieces of legislation, which share common objectives. The first legislation is the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (P.L. 111-148). The first piece offers protection to the patients by ensuring that all are inclusive in insurance cover that is to expand the cover to the poor and the marginalized (Furlow, 2015). The second and most crucial piece that form part of the Affordable Care Act is the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-152) which extends the Medicaid coverage to thousands and millions of deprived Americans who cannot afford to take the insurance covers for their health. Again, the act contributes immensely towards improving the Medicaid services as well as making better the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The Effect of Affordable Care Act Enactment on Federal State Relations The enactment of the Affordable Care Act can significantly affect the Federal State Relations. To start with, the Act will inflict new costs on state government budgets, thus making the policy to be more expensive for the federal states to afford considering the available funds (Mccarthy, 2014). In addition, the federal government will assume control health insurance regulation, the sector that was for quite a long time under the state authority. The management of the insurance by the federal government will homogenize the policy without considering the personal interests of the citizens better than the state, which covers smaller boundaries. Another effect of the Affordable act enactment on the federal states relation is that the implementation and provision of customer-friendly application processes will vary amongst states due to income strength. It is obvious that some states have different types of people such as those with higher incomes as well as those with low incomes who could wish to apply for the expanded Medicaid program (Furlow, 2015). The states with financial power shall be in good shape to meet the requirements but the rest will not afford to meet the requirements in time. Other states argue that the Act forces industry changes that over works the health professionals, thus creating dissatisfaction and withdraw of care providers. It is also critical to note that the Act will affect the federal state relations in that it will impose over 190 million additional paperwork hours each year as well as increase the expenditure on new administration personnel. The mentioned procedures will indeed increase the expenditure on the states thus making it unfriendly and debatable. The reduction of payment and increase of the penalties by the Affordable Care Act is another effect of the new healthcare plan. Reduction of payment is likely to cause the insolvency by the healthcare facilitators thus causing a major threat of inaccessibility of the health cover to all American citizens who serve as the beneficiaries (Mccarthy, 2014). The last and most critical effect is that the Affordable Care Act aggravates the booming healthcare workface shortage in various states thus making it a challenge for various states to address the two issues (Furlow, 2015). Most Americans believe that the guarantee of accessibility and quality care is not possible, thus distrusting the state leadership and the government control I the health...