Federal policy on afordable care Act

Veterans and the Affordable Healthcare Act
The veterans suffer various challenges emanating from their roles they actively in the battle frontlines. They suffer mental problems like the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, anxiety, aggression, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia. This challenge is further compounded by the lack of mental health providers and the necessities related to the VA benefits. The veterans challenge is not recent but has been around for many decades yet has not been effectively resolved.

The Affordable Care Act was crafted purposefully to help more Americans, especially those of lower economic standards, and expose them to greater accessibility to affordable health insurance. This policy is meant to enhance the quality of health care and health insurance, as it diminishes the health care spending within the USA as well availing more choices for the consumers and putting the insurance more to accountability than before (Obamacare Facts, 2017). These are benefits that the veterans are meant to get from the Affordable Care Act since the aforementioned challenges that they face in terms of health are effectively covered by this policy.

Approximately six years after the enactment of this Affordable Care Act and the policy is beneficial to the American population and the veterans in particular. This policy has increased the number of Americans with health insurance cover and this expansion covers the veterans, meaning more veterans are now covered than before. The ACA is also seen to have handled the dysfunctional individual insurance market since now more Americans, who were previously locked out of buying their own insurance due to preexisting conditions or since the cover did not cater for the service they needed are now able to buy the insurance at the same cost as the healthier people, hence benefiting the veterans (Rowner J., 2016). The ACA has also improved the Medicare program since now even those who were already in the program get the preventive the services and annual checkups and those who make us of high prescription drugs get a relief to fill the gap that the 2003 Medicare program would not fill and among these are the veterans who often have to buy fairly expensive medication for their mental and general health wellbeing.

The ACA has proven to be of great benefit to the poor Americans, like majority of the veterans, making them more financially secure than it was before since the ACA ensured their bills have been paid for hence their debt reduced significantly. A paper from National Bureau of Economic Research indicates that those Americans who subscribed for the Medicaid program under the ACA expansion saw their collection go down by $600 to $1,000 and the report indicates that this extra saving was used by this poor population to pay off their debts making them more financially secure than before the ACA expansion.

This ACA policy adheres to the best practice ethics since any policy implemented among any social group is supposed to have the utmost good faith and also have a greater benefit for majority as it minimizes the harm to the targeted population. These are the qualities that have been experienced from the implementation of the ACA. This policy can be said to be highly effective in addressing the needs that the veterans have in relation to the health care needs. Generally, the access to quality health care has been increased by this ACA policy. An analysis carried out recently by the RAND Corporation found out that almost 17 million more citizens of US have been covered by various insurance operators since the opening of the health insurance exchanges. This led to the drop of the uninsured adults above 18 years to 11.9% for the first quarter of 2015, which was a 6% drop from the end of 2013.

The ACA as a policy has significantly improved the lives of the veterans since it covers all veterans without the need for them to further pay more than the regular population. According to the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (2015), the veterans just need to register with VA and they will enjoy the health coverage that meets the health care law's standards of US without having to undergo additional steps to get the hellcat coverage. This means that the veterans will have adequate health care provisions that will make it easier for them to get medical attention whenever they fall sick and even the continued mental health services. This policy can be said to be effectively handling the challenges that it was crafted to resolve, particularly in line with the veteran health challenges.

There are various challenges that this policy still faces particularly in line with the veterans issues. There is still need to have more veterans enroll into the program and benefit from the provisions of the ACA. The congress expected an enrollment of 21 million in 2016 but that expectation was lowered to 13 million due to the smaller enrolment number, among these are the veterans. Another factor that still hinder the effectiveness of this policy is the fact that there is the so called 'Medicaid gap', a situation where the citizens or veterans are eligible for the Medicaid under the ACA but their states opted not to accept the expansion after the supreme court ruled that the expansion was optional for each state.

There are various measures that need to be taken in order to have the ACA more effective particularly among the veterans. One of the biggest impediments to enrolment of the willing veterans into the ACA Medicare is the unwillingness of their states to join in the membership. There is need therefore to provide block grants to states for Medicaid and empowering the states to take control of managing the population. These stats will hence need to lower the eligibility requirements so that everyone is eligible to the Medicaid (Toussaint J.,2016).

References

Obamacare Facts, (2017). Affordable Health Care and the Affordable Care Act. Retrieved May 18, 2017 from https://obamacarefacts.com/affordable-healthcare/

Rowner J., (2016). How Obamacare Is Working -- and How It's Not. Retrieved May 18, 2017 http://time.com/money/4209465/is-obamacare-working/

Reisman M.,(2015). The Affordable Care Act, Five Years Later: Policies, Progress, and Politics. Retrieved May 18, 2017 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4571845/

Toussaint J., (2016). Improve the Affordable Care Act, Don't Repeal It. Retrieved May 18, 2017 https://hbr.org/2016/11/improve-the-affordable-care-act-dont-repeal-it

U.S Department of Veteran Affairs, (2015). VA, Affordable Care ACt and You. Retrieved May 18, 2017 https://www.va.gov/health/aca/