Question

What are some of the current healthcare reform initiatives for the United States.

Answer 1

Health care reform is a general rubric used for discussing major health policy creation or changes for the most part, governmental policy that affects health care delivery in a given place.It primarily attempts to improve the access to health care specialists, and it improves the quality of health care.

Current Healthcare Reforms

The comprehensive health reform law enacted in March 2010, sometimes called as ACA,PPACAor Obamacare.The law has 3 primary goals

1. Make affordable health Insurance available to more people.The law provides consumers with subsidies that lower costs with incomes between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level.
2. Expanding the Medicaid program to cover all adults with income below 138% of the Federal poverty level.
3. Support innovative medical care delivery methods designed to lower the costs of health care generally.

Other new health reform

• Affordable care act(ACA) and the Medicare Access and Chip Reauthorisation Act (MACRA) of 2015 established new ways of paying Physicians intnded to promote high quality patient care..
• Other delivery reform strategies adopted by the ACA and MACRA change the way traditional services or penalises providers for adverse patient outcomes.

A)Examples: Bundled payment methods: make a single combined payment services provided during an episode of care, which is intended to promote greater care coordination, lower cost, and better outcomes.Payment still fee for service, but providers have an incentive to reduce the cost of services within the bundle.

• Recalibrating reforms for better results: Medicare plays a central role in shaping the delivery system. Medicares' paymet systems profoundly influence the way hospitals, physicians, and other suppliers of services and products in the health sector organise themselves to care for patients.
• Improved Consumer Information on medicine coverageoptions and supplemental Insurance reform: a revamped approach to delvery system reform should begin with making it easier for Medicare beneficiaries to make good choices.Today beneficiaries can enroll in the traditional Medicare program or opt to get their Medicare benefits through a fully capitated MA plan.In addition beneficiaries can select prescription drug coverage and can enroll in a supplemental insurane plan.

The cost of health care in the Uanited States has grown rapidly for many years, typically well above growth in the overall economy.Those high costs have not guaranteed high quality care or good patient outcomes,and our delivery sstems remains insufficient.What is needed is a process of continuous improvement in the efficiency and quality of the care delivered to patients.This is the core belief motivating the delivery system reform effort, which should be continued even as important features of the ACA come under review.

The key question is how besy to pursue more cost effective care delivery in the United States.At the moment, the federal government is trying to use its leverage to bring about greater efficiency, employing its regulatory powers under the Medicare program.That approach, while understandable, should be amended to make room for more private initiative and vonsumer incentives.Those are the driving forces for productivity improvement in other sectors for the national economy and they should be harnessed to produce better outcomes in health care as well.