Healthcare Policies and Consumer Costs

The Impact of Federal Healthcare Policies

H. Washington

There is no doubt or surprise that healthcare cost is rising. There is no way getting around it. People are not liking the increase, but they know having healthcare insurance is essential. The cost is attributed to the cost of premiums, co-pays, prescriptions, and deductibles. Employers who work for companies obtain health care insurance through their employers. Medicare and Medicaid are provided for elderly, people who considered disabled, and low-income households with children. Others who worked for smaller businesses are left find insurance at a reasonable and affordable cost. While health care systems are prospering with innovation of medical technology and treatments, a large number of independent and lower cost community providers are struggling to keep up. Consumer engagement is a major aspect for controlling health spending, the challenge is when consumer want an affordable health care without restrictions on access to providers and services. Let’s examine the Affordable Care Act and other health care policies and their impacts it has on consumers’ costs.

The Affordable Care Act known as Obamacare was implemented in 2010. The act was aimed to provide affordable health insurance coverage for everyone. It was implemented to protect consumers from high costs or restricted care. ACA have positive outcomes for consumers who have benefited from the insurance. Some insurance companies are asking to pay at least eighty percent of insurance premiums on medical care and improvements, well ACA aims to prevent insurers from making unreasonable rate increase. The ACA have many preventative services that have low co-pays or deductibles. The goal is to have high quality medical services and less cost of healthcare costs. Senior citizens are having trouble affording prescriptions, with ACA the prescriptions are more adorable. Households benefited from federal health care policies through improved health status. The improvements in health status have made a positive economic impact on households through increased productivity, reduced absenteeism and enhanced independence.

With every policy, there are negative outcomes just like positive. Insurance companies have a wider range of benefits and people are being covered with preexisting conditions. This has increased the premiums for people who have health care. Taxes on medical devices and pharmaceutical sales are increasing so people are paying higher taxes when they purchase devices. With health care coverage cost increasing less families and individuals are having problems paying out of pocket costs. The expensive health care costs are affecting household finances. Income and savings that can be used for consumer goods, children’s future educational costs, and retirement are now being used for health care services. Some families are forced to choose between normal necessities and health care.

With healthcare policies, federal government must confront a basic question of fairness, will the purchase of the health care affect Americans- the employed, the low income families/ individuals, the wealthy, and the middle class.



References

Altman, S. & Mechanic, R. (2018) Health Care Cost Control: Where Do We God From Here? Health Affairs. Doi: 10.1377/hblog20180705.24704 retrieved from https://www.healthaffairs.org/do/10.1377/hblog20180705.24704/full/

N.A (2002) Effects of Health Care Spending on the U.S. Economy. Retrieved from https://aspe.hhs.gov/basic-report/effects-health-care-spending-us-economy