Health Care Law: Final Exam Writing Assignment (Term Paper Sample)

Health Care Law: Final Exam
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St. Joseph’s University
Health Care Law: Final Exam
Question 1 (A): STATUTORY LAW
The state law to be evaluated in this paper is the law found in the Chapter 486.021 (11.a) of the Florida Statutes concerning the direct access of patients to physical therapists. According to this statute, the physical therapists in the state are allowed to access patients directly and implement their treatment plan for a period not exceeding thirty days. If the patient condition does not improve within the thirty days, the physical therapist should consult a healthcare practitioner (Florida Physical Therapy Association, 2017). The direct access law should be modified to prohibit physical therapists from accessing their clients directly and continue providing their services to the patients until they see the need to refer them to the healthcare practitioners. This is because the health conditions that prompted the patients to seek the services of the physical therapist could sometimes be a manifestation of serious health conditions (Ojha, Snyder, & Davenport, 2014). The physical therapist should now be allowed to determine when the patient should be referred to the healthcare practitioners. Therefore, it would be important not to limit the number of days that a patient should seek the services of a physical therapist before being referred to a healthcare practitioner
The other law that is to be examined in this paper is Affordable Care Act (ACA). The ACA has played a vital role in improving access to healthcare for many Americans. However, some provisions of the act may need to be repealed to enhance its fairness and increase the number of individuals covered. One provision of the ACA that needs to be reviewed includes the tax credit system of the ACA. According to the current tax credit system of the ACA, the employment-based health insurance that is less than 9.66 percent of the family’s income is considered affordable (Teitelbaum & Wilensky, 2017). This implies that an employee with a family would pay more than the recommended 9.66% of the income to cover the whole family (Teitelbaum & Wilensky, 2017). To eliminate this "family glitch," it would be important to pass legislations that allow all the members of the family to have access to the Advanced Premium Tax Credit (APTC). This problem can also be fixed by only allowing the dependents to access the APTC subsidies. All the employees who do not have access to the affordable family coverage should be allowed to access subsidized coverage to the child-only policies (Howard & Benshoof, 2015). Such initiatives would help in the elimination of unfairness in the ACA availed by the loophole in the Act.
Question 2: (A). CASE LAW
The two case laws to be explored in this paper include the Zubik v. Burwell case and the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) v. Sebelius case. Both cases were concerning the interpretation of the Affordable care Act. Zubic v. Burwell case was presented before the Supreme Court of the United States (Lynch, Cohen, and Sepper, 2017). The lawsuit was meant to determine whether other religious organizations apart from the church were to be exempted from the contraceptive regulation adopted by the U.S Department of Human Services (HHS) as provided under the ACA. According to this provision of the ACA, all non-church employers are required to cover some contraceptives for their female employees. This exempted the church employers. The petitioners in Zubic v. Burwell case were the religious bodies that argued that this coverage violated the provision of the 1992 Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The court of appeal indicated that religious organizations were not able to show that the contraceptive mandate violated their freedom of religion (Lynch, Cohen, and Sepper, 2017). This case law should be modified to ensure that the employees of religious organizations are provided with contraceptive coverage. However, such organizations should be allowed to pay for contraceptive coverage or pay a certain amount to their employees to ensure that they pay the same if they wish. By doing so, all employees whose religious beliefs do not forbid the use of contraceptions will have the contraceptive coverage.
In the NFIB v. Sebelius case, the Supreme Court of the United States gave the states the permission to opt-out the expansion of the Medicaid as provided by the ACA. Although Medicaid has increased the accessibility of healthcare by the Americans, many Americans have not yet received. The decision of the Supreme Court to allow the ...