(Rennie; Fontanarosa, 2006) Apart from financial reasons, millions are not bale to access healthcare due to a lot of barriers inclusive of geography, racial differences and immigrant status. The people who do not have access to required care, that might comprise incapability to get primary care chronic care, specialist care, or emergency care stand at risk for severe health consequences. As per a recent report, absence of health insurance was linked with considerably lowered application of recommended healthcare services for cancer prevention, cardiovascular disease threat reduction, and diabetes management within the lower-income as also higher-income adults. Apart from the concerns, trouble, and stress directly associated to their illness, patients those who lack insurance or are underinsured also encounter increased levels of debt, threatening calls from collection agencies, anxiety, and possible insolvency. (Rennie; Fontanarosa, 2006)

Impact of reform measures on the nursing profession:

The U.S. healthcare system is considered among the most technologically advanced one in the world. The advanced characteristics of the system, nevertheless, have been corresponded by sharp rise in healthcare costs. The spiraling costs, though not exclusively fuelled by technological advances, has encouraged remedial action by means of huge transformations planned to enhance the delivery of care at the same time lowering costs. This corrective action has come within the ambit of healthcare reforms. Till now, healthcare reform measures have transformed the conventional model of patient care delivery, generating new managed care providers and HMOs whose target is efficient provision of care. Even though the consequences of these changes on the consumer have been remarkable, their outcome on the providers and on the people responsible for providing care has been immense, but it has been ignored. ("Collective bargaining in the nursing profession: salient issues and recent developments in healthcare reform," 2002)

The nursing profession,...

It has been cited by Clark et al. In several studies whose writers saw rise in working pressures, responsibilities and lower staffing to be the reform associated alterations which the nurses have experienced. Reacting to these changes, nurses more and more are joining unions in order to represent them in fighting initiatives which they assert could endanger the quality of care of patient and lower the standard of the working condition of the nurses'. Formation of nursing union is not new to the profession of nursing. The American Nurses Association -- ANA for instance has been representing nurses in America for the past several decades. Taking into account the condition of instability within the healthcare industry, the reality that nurses represents a considerable part of majority of hospital' staffing costs and the effect which healthcare reforms has put on the working condition of nurses. ("Collective bargaining in the nursing profession: salient issues and recent developments in healthcare reform," 2002)
References

Granger, David; Young, Audrey. (1999) "Healthcare and the Underserved: America's Poor and Managed Care." Project of the Standing Committee on Health Policy: American Medical Student Association. Retrieved 10 September, 2007 at http://www.amsa.org/pdf/hlthcareunderserved.pdf

N.A. (2002, Jun 1) "Collective bargaining in the nursing profession: salient issues and recent developments in healthcare reform" Hospital Topics. Retrieved 10 September, 2007 at http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0198-95081_ITM

N.A. (n. d.) "Nursing's Agenda for Healthcare Reform." The American Nurses Association

Inc. Retrieved 10 September, 2007 at http://www.needlestick.org/readroom/rnagenda.htm

Rennie, Drummond; Fontanarosa, Phil B. (2006, May 10) "Theme Issue on Access to Healthcare." Journal of American Medical Association, vol. 295, no. 18, pp: 2182-2183.

HEALTHCARE REFORM"