The United States’ government has been continuously committed to reducing inequality in the provision of quality healthcare among her member states. Therefore, the government initiated the Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) as one of the policies to respond to the problem of health inequality. Taking Los Angeles as our case study, we are going to discuss how the ACA policy has worked towards achieving its objectives.
It is important to note that people perceive ACA as an expansion of the patient protection Act with the primary objective to help community members who does not have a health insurance cover access medical services easily. Therefore, ACA aims at improving the delivery of healthcare services to all the American regardless of their social status (Seith & Isakson, 2011). One of the ACA objectives is to reduce the disparities in healthcare. The Obama care has played an important role in responding to the challenges associated with income inequalities in America by introducing the ACA. The disparities in healthcare have always been a challenge in providing equal health opportunities to student in the United States irrespective of the student’s color, gender, race, age and economic status.
One important element of the Act is that it has led to the expansion of the coverage of Medicaid to incorporate all the American citizens. The introduction of the policy in Los Angeles has seen a dramatic decrease in the percentage of adults and children without health insurance. This is evident between the year 2011 and 2015 (Larissa, 2017). This dramatic decline from 28.5 to 11.7 percent spanned ethnic, gender, racial, age, as well as geographic groups of adults ranging between 18 to 64 years old throughout the nation. The impact was even better for children. The percentage of the children uninsured declined to 3.4% in the year 2015. The decline showed a clear improvement from 10.1 percent in 2001 (Larissa, 2017)
The report shows private insurance coverage dropped between 2007 and 2011, and attributes the lack of continued decline between the year 2011 and 2015 to the expansion that covered California (Larissa, 2017). The ACA has helped in covering millions more Californians than they were initially eligible. Should the ACA get replaced or repealed today, those individuals may lose part of their coverage or else be dumped from their insurers. As Michael Cousineau, USC professor puts it, “it’s not perfect, but the ACA has gotten us closer to a more equitable health care system, “(Cousineau, Stevens, & Farias, 2011).
ACA policy has enabled children to improve at school in Los Angeles. It has also helped adults to be more productive consequently leading to the community members to live longer and healthier lives. Most of the finances that were initially used to cater for health care expenses can now be channeled to other areas such as education and investment since the
ACA policy can cater for healthcare (Obama, 2016).
In conclusion, it is evident that ACA is one of the best social policies affecting the health sector in Los Angeles. The ACA policy has seen a remarkable change among people in terms of health care accessibility regardless of the social or economic background of the people. The disparities initially encountered in the health sector were mainly brought about by the private health insurers whose terms were expensive for the regular citizens. The ACA has brought an end to this disparity by ensuring affordable and accessible healthcare to all people. The adoption of this policy in Los Angeles has transformed the health care sector and such similar policies should be embraced in other sectors like in education in order to bring forth more equality among all the citizens.
References
Cousineau, M. R., Stevens, G. D., & Farias, A. (2011). Measuring the impact of outreach and
Enrollment strategies for public health insurance in California. Health services research, 46(1p2), and 319-335.
Larissa P. (2017), fewer people uninsured in Los Angeles since Obamacare, But Disparities
Remain, Retrieved from, https://publichealthsciences.usc.edu/.../fewer-people-uninsured-in-los-angeles-since-ob... On April 30, 2018.
Obama, B. (2016). The United States health care reform: progress to date and next
Steps. Jama, 316(5), 525-532.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5069435/
