Introduction
Passed into the United States law by President Barrack Obama, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) is a cardinal statute. Coupled with the Health Care and Education Reform Act of 2010, the PPACA forms the backbone of the 2010 health care reforms agenda. These laws cover transformation of health insurance market, offering improved coverage for people with pre-existing status, expanding prescription drug treatment in Medicare, and prolonging the life of the Medicare trust fund by 12 years in the minimum. Although the United State federal government believes that PPACA will go a great length in improving health care delivery, I hold that it will undermine the quality of health care but the big question remains, how will the act jeopardize the quality of care.
Implications
The PPACA has triggered numerous waves of opposition from radical organization (Williams & Redhead, 2010, p. 57). The organizations have raised various allegations against the act. The provision of the Act will get its funds from various taxes and offsets. Significant sources of fresh revenue imply a broadened Medicare tax on proceeds above $200,000 and $250,000, for individual and coalition organizations respectively, and 40 percent tax on Cadillac insurance policies coupled with more taxes from pharmaceuticals, and expensive diagnostic equipments (Grier, 2010, p.14). Offset are derived from projected cost savings including enhanced equality in the Medicare Benefits programs relative to customary Medicare.
Such increased taxes translate into increased cost of health care provision. Health care organizations implement unprecedented strategies to cope with the demands of the act. The health organizations may use strategies like buying cheap clinical equipments and reducing staff to adjust the cost of health care delivery. The House republican argued that the PPACA would result in a loss of 650, 000 employments based on the Congressional Budget Office (Brooks & Lori, 2011). Thus the low quality of equipment use and reduced number of staffs availble to cater for the increased demand add up to low quallity care.
PPACA will increase the number of residents that have health insurance, thereby increasing the demand of health care services. This change is attributed to the tax credit the act endorses on small businesses (Levey, 2010, p.5). However, this increase is inverse to the medical equipment and phramaceuticals available in health care facilities because of the aforementioned rise in their taxation.
Noteworthy, the rising health cost will affect substantially on the federal budget in the next ten years or beyond. However, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) a considerable portion of expenditures on health care contributes little to residents’ health (Elmendorf, 2010, p. 7). Increased cost of health care will imply that health care organizations will have to struggle to cope up with the rising cost, which may even push them to closure.
The impact of PPACA on the health care stakeholders is dramatic. By virtue of giving the government too much involvement in health care, its quality is deemed to fall, because private organizations will be limited leading to very minimal competiton (Barbieri, 2010). Competiton usually helps to boost the quality of care because organizations will try to outwit one another and in so doing, they implement the latest technology and employ many qualified staff members. Nevertheles, this is not possible with the the PPACA act.
Finally, the increase in health care may make profit-based health care organization withdraw from the market. This may leave few organizations in health care industry, thereby leading to competiton for the scarce health care resources. Competition will mean a high provider-patient ratio resulting in reduced quality of health care. This will lead to congestation of health care facilities.
Conclusion
The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act elicit a heated debate regarding its validity. Although this act is alleged to boost health care provision, it should be extensively researched to etsablish its actual implication on health care provision and the federal government should make the necessary amendments, so that it achieves its objectives.
Reference list
Barbieri, R. (2010). CNN poll: Americans don’t like health care bill. CNN. Web.
Brooks, J., & Lori, R. (2011). A ‘job killing’ law? FatCheck. Web.
Elmendorf, D. W. (2010). Presentation to the Institute of Medicine: Health cost and the federal budget. Congressional budget office. Web.
Grier, P. (2010). Health care reform bill 101: who will pay for reform? Christian Science Monitor, 4, 13-14.
Levey, N. N. (2010, December 27). More small business are offering health benefits to workers. Los Angeles Times , pp.5.
Williams, E., & Redhead, S. (2010). Public Health, Workforce, Quality, and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). Congressional Research Service (CRS). Damascus, MD: Penny Hill Press.