Introduction to Healthcare Reform - Essay Example

To begin with, the Affordable Health Care Act has expanded coverage for more than 32 million Americans across the board. Broken down into actual figures, the coverage for health care now applies to the following (Thoma, M. “Who Benefits From Healthcare Reform?”): “1. 24 million people will purchase coverage through the new insurance exchanges. 2. 16 million people will enrol in either Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP)”.

The figures mentioned above do not include the number of American retirees who will not be covered by the healthcare reform act since they are already covered by Medicare. Comparing the figures for those covered by the law and those who do not bring us a total of 40 million enrollees.

Although the numbers for those covered and newly covered by the health care law seem impressive, most people will miss the fact that of the almost 40 million people added to the system, 8 million of them will also lose their coverage. The figures show that healthcare coverage will change for these people because (Thoma, M. “Who Benefits From Healthcare Reform?”): “3.5 million declines in the number of people purchasing insurance outside of exchanges. 4.3 million declines in the number of people obtaining health insurance through their employers”.

The healthcare reforms that Pres. Obama set into play does have its benefits for the middle to low-income classes. It even offers coverage for illegal immigrants. This is admirable of the president to do but he and his supporters forgot a sector of the American society when they drafted this law. According to Martin (2010), the new healthcare reform act neglects the needs of senior citizens because it cuts $500 bn from the Medicare budget.

In the meantime, the DHHS, through its AHRQ and CMS branches will help implement the new health care system by performing specific tasks that are assigned to their departments. Since the AHRQ is tasked with sponsoring research in the field of American healthcare, their main task will be to make sure that the new healthcare law will elevate healthcare quality for all Americans by reducing medical-related costs and expanding healthcare access (“Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality”, n.d.).

On the other hand, CMS has been given the duty of overseeing the major (Justification of Estimates for Appropriation Committees”, 2012): “expansion of the Medicaid program; a 2-year extension of CHIP, the gradual elimination of the Medicare prescription drug “doughnut hole”, and the creation of a CMS Innovation Center which will explore different care delivery and payment models in Medicare, Medicaid, and CHIP... and gives CMS unprecedented new tools as well as new resources for fighting fraud, waste, and abuse”.

The law is seen to have had a positive impact on the profession starting the year 2010 because the American Nurses Association, The American Academy of Family Physicians, helped to draft the law (Routson, J., 2010). The positive effects on the nursing industry are listed as follows:

“Nurse practitioners. Nurse practitioners (NP) are some of the fastest-growing primary care professionals in the country. The legislation calls for new programs to support nurse-managed health centres, which are centres operated by advanced practice nurses that provide comprehensive primary care and wellness services to underserved or vulnerable populations.

Primary care physicians. The legislation requires that Medicaid payment rates to primary care physicians for furnishing primary care services be no less than 100% of Medicare payment rates in 2013 and 2014 (the first year of the Senate bill’s Medicaid coverage expansion to all individuals with incomes under 133% of poverty).

Healthcare workforce. The legislation would establish a new program at the Department of Labor to address projected nurse shortages and to support and increase training programs”.