Chad McConnell
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- Sep 9, 2018
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In healthcare, policies are changing all the time, and health insurance plans are increasingly developing high-deductible insurance polices as well as narrow network. More and more this is causing the consumer to pay more out of pocket. The whole overall goal of this movement is to encourage consumers to become more aware of their health and take control of it learning to live a healthier life making better health choices. There are many benefits or shortcomings that federal or state healthcare policies have on consumer costs as well as many positive and negative effects which we will look at throughout this paper.
Healthcare is a field that is forever changing which makes it important for policy makers at the state and federal levels to strengthen healthcare for everyone no matter what class they come from which leads to policies changing all the time. With healthcare, there are many benefits and shortcomings for the consumer depending on their situation when referring to healthcare coverage. A benefit from these changing would be the fact that everyone has been given a chance to obtain health insurance when there used to be so many that went without (Aron-Dine, 2017).
A shortcoming of policy changes would be overwhelming out of pocket costs for consumers (University of Phoenix, 2018). State and federal policymakers are expected to assure that every American has equal access to healthcare that is affordable as well as finds ways that are effective in delivering and paying for healthcare. Ways to get to this done are doing things like gathering information that is reliable from providers, people and stake holders as well as putting efforts into research (Commonwealth Fund, 2018). With our goal being an equal healthcare system, we still need to do more research to figure out how to achieve that goal. One way to start a movement towards change to achieve that goal is to make sure we understand the needs of the whole community and not just one class by itself.
Looking at the positive effects of state and federal policy changes we would be looking at the ACA or The Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act over its time has seen many changes that have led to positive impacts on the consumer in multiple ways. These ways have been things like in the year 2017 the NHIS data proved that the uninsured rate for that year was at its lowest in history (Aron-Dine, 2017). Also, children now can stay on their parent’s health insurance all the way till age 26 which is a major improvement (Aron-Dine, 2017). The ACA has shown many good qualities especially how it has allowed every American the opportunity to gain health insurance coverage, but it does have some negative aspects as well.
The most notable negative aspect of policy changes at the federal and state levels would be the cost of healthcare as well as the high deductibles. New regulations for firms make it very costly and unfortunately for the consumer, these costly regulations translate into higher prices for the consumers (Chambers & Collins, 2016). This mostly affects the lower income people more than any other class which should be expected. Unfortunately, these regulations are supposedly set up to protect the most vulnerable consumers but, they are more harmful to them because those people can’t afford the cost increases (Chambers & Collins, 2016).
Overall, changes in the healthcare field will always occur and what changes those are will determine whether we have negative or positive effects from those changes. The goal is to figure out a way to have healthcare coverage that is equally protective, affordable, and gives you access to healthcare that is high-quality healthcare. To obtain these goals we need to put in more research at the federal and state levels, so we can determine what changes need to be made as well as what they will do for all people going forward.
Healthcare is a field that is forever changing which makes it important for policy makers at the state and federal levels to strengthen healthcare for everyone no matter what class they come from which leads to policies changing all the time. With healthcare, there are many benefits and shortcomings for the consumer depending on their situation when referring to healthcare coverage. A benefit from these changing would be the fact that everyone has been given a chance to obtain health insurance when there used to be so many that went without (Aron-Dine, 2017).
A shortcoming of policy changes would be overwhelming out of pocket costs for consumers (University of Phoenix, 2018). State and federal policymakers are expected to assure that every American has equal access to healthcare that is affordable as well as finds ways that are effective in delivering and paying for healthcare. Ways to get to this done are doing things like gathering information that is reliable from providers, people and stake holders as well as putting efforts into research (Commonwealth Fund, 2018). With our goal being an equal healthcare system, we still need to do more research to figure out how to achieve that goal. One way to start a movement towards change to achieve that goal is to make sure we understand the needs of the whole community and not just one class by itself.
Looking at the positive effects of state and federal policy changes we would be looking at the ACA or The Affordable Care Act. The Affordable Care Act over its time has seen many changes that have led to positive impacts on the consumer in multiple ways. These ways have been things like in the year 2017 the NHIS data proved that the uninsured rate for that year was at its lowest in history (Aron-Dine, 2017). Also, children now can stay on their parent’s health insurance all the way till age 26 which is a major improvement (Aron-Dine, 2017). The ACA has shown many good qualities especially how it has allowed every American the opportunity to gain health insurance coverage, but it does have some negative aspects as well.
The most notable negative aspect of policy changes at the federal and state levels would be the cost of healthcare as well as the high deductibles. New regulations for firms make it very costly and unfortunately for the consumer, these costly regulations translate into higher prices for the consumers (Chambers & Collins, 2016). This mostly affects the lower income people more than any other class which should be expected. Unfortunately, these regulations are supposedly set up to protect the most vulnerable consumers but, they are more harmful to them because those people can’t afford the cost increases (Chambers & Collins, 2016).
Overall, changes in the healthcare field will always occur and what changes those are will determine whether we have negative or positive effects from those changes. The goal is to figure out a way to have healthcare coverage that is equally protective, affordable, and gives you access to healthcare that is high-quality healthcare. To obtain these goals we need to put in more research at the federal and state levels, so we can determine what changes need to be made as well as what they will do for all people going forward.
