Health care legislative bill analysis and implications

Healthcare Legislative Bill

The expanded and improved Medicare for all Acts

The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act was introduced to the House of Representatives in 2009 and seeks to lobby for the implementation of a common single-payer health care system throughout the United States o0f America. The bill if enacted would require that all medical care costs be paid for automatically by the government instead of private insurances for the same. The move will significantly alter the role of private insurance companies as merely offering supplemental coverage especially when the kind of medical care sought is not all that essential (McCormick, 2009).

With the Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Bill, the country's national system will be paid for through taxes and the monies that will replace the regular insurance premiums. Proponents of the bill argue that by eliminating the need for private insurance companies in the national medical care system, overall Medicare costs will be reduced significantly to the advantage of a vast majority of Americans who can't afford insurance premiums. Though yet to be enacted, the bill will have major impacts on the Medicare sector in the United States. In particular, the nursing sector will be impacted as it is the centre of all medical care practices.

The bill will also address perennial problems affecting provision of sound health ace services in America which include limited resource allocation by the state to the medical care system, geographical distribution of the population and prohibitive personal ethics and beliefs. Some other factors affecting delivery of health care services in the United States are unique to individual circumstances which include ability of doctors and their patients to communicate effectively in cases where medical resources are located according to one's ethnic background, gender and physical location.

Specific Benefits and Provisions of the Bill

The Expanded and Improved Medicare for All Act seeks to achieve the following objectives;

To prevent independent institutions from participating in provision of healthcare services unless such organizations are nonprofit or public institutions. The bill also seeks to allow not-for-profit health care organizations which have the capacity to offer health care services in their own facilities to participate in the new Medicare program.

The bill seeks to expand the current Medicare program so as to offer all residents of the United States free and prompt health care services. This will include not only primary care but also emergency care, prevention and prescriptive drugs, mental health care services, long-term care, vision care and dental services among others.

The bill makes provisions for the medical and nursing institutions to give their patients the freedom to decide which participating institution s and physicians will serve them. If the new national system is enacted, such participating institutions will primarily be any clinic or institution in the United States that receives any amount of funding from the state.

Make it illegal for private health insurers to sell insurance coverage to the general public that duplicates the social benefits provided under the act. The bill however allows the private health care insurers to sell health care benefits that are not necessary on medical grounds like the cosmetic surgery benefits.

Put in place mechanisms for paying institutional providers of healthcare for their services. This prevents cases of financial incentives between health care organizations and physicians.

To establish a national trust fund for financing the new Medicare program with finances deposited from various sources of government revenue for the purpose of health care. This will be achieved through increasing income taxes, by levying a progressive excise tax on both self-employed and pay-roll income and by instituting a nominal tax on bond and stock transactions.

To establish a nationwide program for assisting individuals whose jobs may get be eliminated especially those within the insurance companies through the simplified single- payer process.

In addition to the provisions discussed previously, the bill includes some healthcare-related provisions that will be enacted gradually including subsidizing individual contributions for people, expanding Medicare aid eligibility for special groups of people and providing special tax incentives for businesses to participate in the national Medicare program as well as prohibiting denial of claims or coverage based on current conditions.

If enacted, the bill guarantees that in the next few years, every person in the United States of America will have adequate health insurance protection funded by the state. This will then reduce the number of America's uninsured people from the current twenty percent. This will be achieved through the numerous subsidies meant to encourage relatively small employers to buy insurance covers for their employees and make it easier for them to qualify for state sponsored Medicaid (McCormick, 2009).

Impact of the Bill on Administrative Resources

The government is yet to analyze the cost of the bill but it is largely anticipated that by paying up to fifty-five per cent of all medical costs not already not covered by the national health care program will shift some costs from private healthcare insurance companies to the government. The costs will nevertheless be offset by taxes to be imposed as ill be determined by the congress. Accordingly, insurance premiums paid regularly to insurance companies will be replaced by taxes to be paid to the national fund. Initial savings for the fund will be from scrapping off of the overhead costs of the insurance companies as well as hospital billings fees in respect of private healthcare insurers (John, 2010).

True to its promise, the bill seeks to ensure that the cost of Medicare in the United States is lowered through universal government-funded health care. In some countries like the United Kingdom and Canada, government-run insurance health systems have much lower administrative costs and less bureaucracy than the United States largely private system. The Medicare system proposed by the bill will have impressively lower costs than the current health care systems funded by private insurance companies. The reason for this is that single-payer systems do not necessarily commit huge sums of money to screening for high-risk clients and do not charge high fees.

How Passage of the Bill will impact on nurses

The health care bill will no doubt impact on the vast majority of Americans who are uninsured. It will certainly offer some relief to these people but will equally impact on the nurses and the nursing profession. The most important aspect of this bill is that it will offer uninsured Americans a chance to join a low-cost government funded insurance programs if they so wish. In addition, since cost is an impediment and preventative to many of the ordinary Americans, when a pathway to the much anticipated low cost healthcare is provided, many people will take advantage of it. In particular, nurses across the wide spectrum of the Medicare services sector will be affected. In one way, there will be no need for staff rationing for nurses. Again, there will be need for training of new as well as experienced nurses and the nursing advocacy will certainly improve the inherent nursing clout.