Healthcare Reform PPACA Determine How This Federal

Healthcare Reform PPACA

Determine how this Federal law will affect market-driven and non-market driven decisions.

One of the industries that has felt the effects of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act most immediately and intensely was the insurance industry in the United States. One of the chief reasons that the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act was introduced and passed into American legislation was the effect of rising health care costs attributed to arbitrary and non-competitive costs exacted from healthcare consumers from the insurance industry. There was a general lack of regulation within the industry, which had been demonstrated to have had a negative impact on healthcare outcomes and trends. The United States, while the largest economy and a dominant world superpower, has an underperforming healthcare industry compared to other developed, industrialized nations.

One of the central conflicts associated with the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act is related to philosophical differences of opinion about whether allowing the healthcare industry to be affected by the free market is ultimately to the benefit of American public health at large and specifically, individuals' health options and outcomes. One argument asserts that the free market drives down costs and incentivizes innovations that promote better and more accessible healthcare. The other position on the issues indicates that because healthcare is a fundamental human right, it is too vulnerable to be allowed to be influenced by volatile markets. The healthcare act will prevent the free market from influencing the healthcare industry as extensively as has happened in the past, while at the same time, introducing alternative options for Americans besides in the insular insurance industry.

2. Describe the circumstances at which you would prepare a strategic plan to include this new law in your marketing decisions, knowing this new law may or may not take effect.

When considering the circumstances under which I would prepare a strategic plan for mitigating the effects of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act upon my marketing decisions, I believe it would make sense to formulate a comprehensive strategic plan that incorporated multiple contingency plans. A plan that is created well in advance of the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act taking place would be incredibly important and would allow for the development of projection analysis of the potential effect on the market that the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act would have.

It is not just whether or not the laws takes effect that would determine the course of strategic action for marketing. It is the decisions of other similar corporations and industries that will effect setting a salient and profitable course of action. It would be vital from a marketing perspective to construct an analysis of other marketing strategies relating to the Patient Protection Affordable Care Act's impact on the industry. This will assist in determining optimal operational timing and marketing decision-making.

Even if the law does not take effect, it is reasonable to assume that the preparatory actions of other corporations and industrial interests would have some longer-term impacts upon the market and would influence the strategic planning and marketing efforts of all related businesses.

3. Discuss how each of the five (5) environmental forces will be affected by the new law, which you believe will be the most affected and why.

The social environmental force will be affected by the new law because legal changes influence social conceptions and attitudes toward the core concept. The passing of this healthcare law may engender a wider acceptance of the importance of healthcare reform or it may inspire a widespread backlash. While projection analysis may help determine what the effects of the passing of the new law will be, it is a force beyond control to say how the social environmental force will be changed by the passage of healthcare reform. The economic environmental force is a huge consideration in the discussion and passage of the healthcare reform law as it was the economic downturn of the past several years; which underscored in reform proponents minds the timeliness of the passage of healthcare reform.

The discussion of healthcare reform is in essence a discussion surrounding the changing of the regulatory environment. The passage of healthcare reform would set a strong regulatory precedent surrounding industrial regulation. The United States government will be introducing a state-sanctioned competitive force that will catalyze cost-cutting competitive innovations with that realm of environmental factors. The technological environmental forces are perhaps the least crucial to the consideration of the passage of healthcare reform, but would impact social environmental forces via media dissemination, eg: the impact of emerging social media technology upon social conceptions of healthcare reform.

4. Describe one (1) new target audience and include the characteristics of their demographic and psychographic profiles.