Prevention and Public Health Fund
The Prevention and Public Health Fund was established in the Affordable Care Act in order to expand and increase national investments in prevention and public health. This was done to enhance overall public health outcomes with numerous projects undertaken towards the fulfillment of the course. They include clinical prevention initiatives, tobacco prevention, public health infrastructure, and training of health workforce. Among the diseases and conditions covered by the provision include Alzheimer’s disease (focusing on Prevention) and diabetes. Additionally, a proposal was put in place to help older adults from disadvantaged communities to help them in Chronic Disease Self-Management. However, one of the provisions of the American Health Care Act is to ‘Repeal funding for Prevention and Public Health Fund at the end of Fiscal Year 2018 (Kaye, 2017).
It is astonishing that such programs helping the elderly from disadvantaged backgrounds will be a thing of the past. Such cuts in an already underfunded system can only have a negative outcome. Cutting funding for a prevention program which helps the CDC in dealing with a disease with only a fraction of what it would take to treat it will also result in an increase in health care costs. Diabetes, for instance, is expected to affect approximately a third of the U.S population by CDC. This shows what an impact a cut on prevention funding will have on the public health outcome.
As an advanced nurse, the welfare of the patient is of utmost importance. The patient is not only taken as a sick person but also as a human being. Cutting on preventive funding will likely result in poor health outcomes for patients as a large percentage will not be able to afford quality health care. Dealing with such situations is especially challenging for a nurse because they spend most of the times with the patient. Nurses will be forced to deal with devastated patients with deteriorating conditions and it is a challenge handling such patients, especially if they are unable to afford the high cost of quality health care.
References
Kaye, H. S. (2017). The Potential Impact of the American Health Care Act on Home and Community-Based Services Spending.
Second peer
Summary of the Health Care Act rolls back to affordable care Act’s expansion of Medicaid. The Act eliminates tax penalties for individuals who are not covered by a health insurance and ending taxes on high income earners and manufacturers of medical related devices for them to finance the current health law. The American Health Care Act was announced on 6th March, and passed by the House of Representatives on May. The overall approach of the Act is increase amount for the young and reduce for the older adults. The Act has provisions that help people buy insurance if they are not enrolled in a government program and have no coverage at work. Under the previous rules, insurers could not charge older adults more than three times what they charge young adults (Gaffney & McCormick, 2017). The new Act allows the insurers to charge the older adults five times more compared to young adults.
Under the new Act, continuous coverage is encouraged by requiring that the insurers impose 30% surcharge on premiums for those people who have a gap in paying. On the other hand, the insurers are prohibited from charging very high premiums that are based on an individual’s health status. The Health Care Act does not change the benefit design by a large margin. The requirement of the Affordable Care Act to cover 10 essential health benefit categories remain unchanged. There no changes on prohibition on lifetime and annual dollar limits. Nevertheless, Federal premium tax credits cannot cover abortion services except those outlined in the Hyde Amendment. The Act is expected to cut taxes of high income earners by repealing payroll tax increase and a tax on investment as imposed by the Act.
References
Gaffney, A., & McCormick, D. (2017). The Affordable Care Act: implications for health-care equity. The Lancet, 389(10077), 1442-1452
