NURS 6050 Politics and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

NURS 6050 Politics and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

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Politicians’ main interest is to be re-elected to continue maintaining their political positions. The interest of being reelected every campaign has greatly impacted the policymaking process. Politicians would rather support what looks good in the eyes of people to ensure they do not lose quorum (Milstead & Short, 2019). Since President Trump became the president of the United States of America, he has been against the Affordable Care Act. As a result, he has tried to repeal the policy but the efforts have failed. President Trump’s administration has not given up since many trials to repeal the Affordable Care Act are expected. Most probably, the repeal trials have failed so that politicians can safeguard their likelihood of being re-elected. This paper explains how the cost-benefit analysis in terms of legislators being re-elected affected efforts to repeal/replace the ACA. It also explains how analysis of the voter views may impact politicians’ recommendations about the Medicare Prescription Drug Savings and Choice Act of 2019
. How The Cost-Benefit Analysis in Terms of Legislators Being Re-Elected Affected Efforts to Repeal/Replace The ACA
The ‘Obamacare’ commonly known as the Affordable Care Act was launched by President Barack Obama. The policy has enabled most Americans to receive health insurance. However, the repeal process has failed perhaps because election matters a lot to politicians. Just within a year of Trump’s inauguration, Republicans began the debate to repeal ‘Obamacare’ and revise the long-standing Medicare and Medicaid programs (Obama, 2017). Because replacing the ACA would result in many people losing their insurance and this would limit medical care, it would impact negatively the 2018 election. Many leaders who supported the repeal would lose their seats. The leaders could not support the repeal upon realizing that it would negatively impact their reelection. A clear picture here is that political leaders do not care about how repealing the Affordable Care Act would affect Americans but how it would affect their reelection chances (Taylor et al., 2017). Therefore, it is clear that not just election results matters to politicians but also the threat of upcoming elections.
The Medicare Prescription Drug Savings and Choice Act of 2019
Politicians’ interest in being reelected also impacted the Medicare Prescription Drug Savings and Choice Act of 2019. This bill was introduced by the representative for Illinois’s 9th congressional district who is a Democrat (Congress.Gov, 2020). The bill is still in the first stage of the legislative process. It was introduced to Congress on 21st October 2019. It must be first considered by the committee before it is send to the House or Senate as a whole. Politicians will have to examine this bill to identify whether or not it will impact the upcoming election. This bill touches part D of Medicare, which is a voluntary program that helps pay for outpatient prescription drugs (Congress.Gov, 2020). This section, therefore, might affect many Americans. How this bill will influence the next election will determine whether or not it will be passed as a part of the law that governs Medicare operations in the United States. The cost-benefit analysis in terms of politicians being reelected therefore has a significant influence on their recommendations and positioning of legislative policies (Dickinson & Reinmuth, 2017, October).

References
Congress.Gov. (2020). H.R. 4769: Medicare Prescription Drug Savings and Choice Act of 2019. Retrieved from https://www.congress.gov/
Dickinson, M. J., & Reinmuth, K. (2017, October). Trump, Congress, and Health Care: All Politics Is National. In The Forum (Vol. 15, No. 3, pp. 431-450). https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538105740/The-Trump-Presidency-Outsider-in-the-Oval-Office
Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2019). Health policy and politics: A nurse’s guide (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.
Obama, B. H. (2017). Repealing the ACA without a replacement—the risks to American health care. Obstetrical & Gynecological Survey, 72(5), 263-264. doi: 10.1056/NEJMp1616577
Taylor, D., Olshansky, E., Fugate-Woods, N., Johnson-Mallard, V., Safriet, B. J., & Hagan, T. (2017). Corrigendum to position statement: Political interference in sexual and reproductive health research and health professional education. Nursing Outlook, 65(2), 346–350. doi:10.1016/j.outlook.2017.05.003

I couldn’t agree with you more, and I appreciate Dr. A.E.’s intentions in prompting this question and mentioning social determinants of health. Healthcare quality and access to health care is a major obstacle in healthcare reform. The ACA and AHCA not only strategize to increase access to health care by providing Americans affordable insurance options, but also include interventions to force the improvement of healthcare quality, which becomes a major source of contentions for economic healthcare stakeholders.
NURS 6050 Politics and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care ActAn example of this can be explored by discussing the AHCA element of transitioning care from a fee-for-service reimbursement model to a value based reimbursement model. This AHCA enforced change resulted in a major shift for many health care organizations. Fee-for-service reimbursement rewarded providers for the volume of services they provide, while the value-based approach payments are rendered based off of meeting agreed-upon quality and performance measures directly tied to patient outcomes. According to McHugh, M. D., et al, (2013), the AHCA’s Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program (HRRP) highly invests and highlights the value of quality measures and services offered by health care professionals outside of the provider, specifically nurses. HHRP penalizes hospitals with excessive readmission rates of Medicare beneficiaries; the primary objective of the HRRP is to reduce the rate of readmissions in accordance with the hospitals’ financial incentives with payers’ and patients’ quality goals (McHugh, M. D., et al, 2013). According to McHugh, M.D., et al, (2013), hospitals with higher nursing staff had 25 percent lower odds of being penalized compared to other similar hospitals with lower staffing. One can see why penalties like these would create resistance and motivation for repeal of the AHCA in primary healthcare economic stakeholders and highly influence their political affiliation despite social determinants of health.
References
McHugh, M. D., Berez, J., & Small, D. S. (2013). Hospitals With Higher Nurse Staffing Had Lower Odds Of
Readmissions Penalties Than Hospitals With Lower Staffing. Health Affairs, 32(10), 1740–1747.
https://doi-org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2013.0613
Murphy, L. S., & Warshawsky, N. E. (2015). Nursing Education A Solution to Healthcare’s Gordian Knot?
JONA: The Journal of Nursing Administration, 45(6), 302–304. https://doi-
org.ezp.waldenulibrary.org/10.1097/NNA.0000000000000203

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This is insightful. Affordable Care Act has provided opportunities for millions of Americans to get access to affordable healthcare services. The policy has greatly improved healthcare delivery processes in different healthcare institutions. Affordable Care policy was one of the focuses in the previous elections (Glied & Jackson, 2017). The creation and implementation of different policies in the healthcare system often impact a number of individuals. Particularly, nurses and general healthcare professionals, as well as patients, are mostly affected. The legislation on the Affordable Care Act involved consideration of different factors, including insurance policies from different health insurance companies (Laureate Education, 2018). Also, there was voting based on the party line. However, some of the legislators went beyond the party requirements to consider the impacts of the policy on the citizens. The repealing of the Affordable Care Act by the Trump administration was meant to influence the voting patterns in the subsequent election (Milstead & Short, 2019). The president knew that individuals who cast their votes based on the issues around the affordable care act would remain on his side in the upcoming election.
References
Glied, S., & Jackson, A. (2017). The future of the Affordable Care Act and insurance coverage. American journal of public health, 107(4), 538-540. Retrieved from: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2017.303665
Laureate Education (Producer). (2018). Introduction to Health Policy and Law with Joel Teitelbaum [Video file]. Baltimore, MD: Author.
Milstead, J. A., & Short, N. M. (2019). Health policy and politics: A nurse’s guide (6th ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning.